I really don't understand why the laws are such that they can just keep your car, adding fees, until you pay. It's not like these people want to store their car there. Regardless of the outrageous storage and towing fees, you should be able to take your car immediately and pay them later. They can just put collections out or impound your car later if you don't pay.
I can remember few times I was as angry as I was at a tow yard. My car was stolen, found by the police, and impounded at a tow yard. I went to the tow yard to get the car out, they wanted hundreds of dollars to store the car for the few hours it was there. I went to get some belongings out of the car (I foolishly left my wallet in the car when it was stolen, so I had no cash or credit cards to free the car at that moment), and was accused of stealing my own car by the tow yard employee (as if that somehow makes sense). Later, I returned to pick up the car the next day, these tow yard people had stolen my snow chains out of the car.
Agreed, it is absolutely insane that you have to pay 100% of their seemingly arbitrary fees before taking your car back.
Your credit card company, that you have a written agreement with, would have to jump through such greater hoops to take back the TV you bought if you default (if they can at all).
Taking someone's car should be considered more like turning off their water, for many it's not a convenience but a necessary part of life.
I was curious, so I looked up the relevant state law:
22651.07(3)(c)(2) states that:
Prior to paying any towing, recovery, or storage related fees, a vehicle owner... shall have the right to... Retrieve his or her vehicle during the first 72 hours of storage and not pay a lien fee.
It seems that these tow yards may actually be violating the law by preventing people from retrieving their cars.
> I really don't understand why the laws are such that they can just keep your car, adding fees, until you pay.
In the city where I live, this is mainly because the towing people are given contracts saying they can do just that by the City Council. Of course, a couple of people on the City Council are pretty close to owners of said towing companies.
Seems like the way to reform this would be to expose these kinds of ties, and get normal people to recognize the viciously corrupt cycle that enables them. Unfortunately, politics like this is seen as the preserve of older, richer people, and most others just go about their jobs and accept it as an unfortunate "fact of life".
Towing costs money. From the towing's company point of view towing a car is an investment they are hoping to recover with some margin. When they have your car as a collateral the chances of a successful recovery are much higher than when they just give you the car back. If they had been forced to do the later they'd have to increase the fees to offset the increased risk of losing their money.
Why should they be so privileged as to be able to take and hold your property? I can't think of any other private business that is just gifted this kind of racket.
Why is said person so privledged to park in a no parking zone? Thats public property, he should follow the agreed upon rules that the rest of us follow.
Doesn't matter. They tow and store cars. They don't investigate the story behind each car. They don't change their policies based on how unfortunate and upsetting your story is. They tow and store cars.
Perhaps slightly OT, but this is a friendly reminder to everyone here, especially those freelancing or running their own business: keep an emergency fund
You never know what will happen, but you can be very sure that within a year you're going to encounter a variety of unforeseen financial hits. Not having the money to pay for them leads to stress and sometimes a vicious cycle.
For many Americans, an emergency fund can be an agonizing choice between feeding their family and planning for the future. But for most people reading this forum, an emergency fund it not a challenge once you decide to do it.
Yet for the first couple of years starting a business, I didn't prioritize this. It felt like I was putting more money into growth, but really I slowed myself down as I now and then had to hustle to meet relatively small unforeseen expenses.
After you get an emergency fund, you then ought to think about 3-6 months living expenses in a relatively liquid asset.
After that's done, you can sleep much more soundly.
I honestly don't comprehend why the prototypical HNer (in their 20s, working as a developer) doesn't have a year or two of expenses saved up. It should be trivial.
Expenses is the keyword, I think. Most prototypical HNers live life well above what they could live at (e.g., less organically-grown gourmet coffee and more rice). A year or two of true, necessary expenses could be closer to 6 months of income for many here.
Agreed. If there were a scenario where one had to use those expenses for years, I'd expect them to relocate to a lower COL area (ie. not SF) and adopt a somewhat humbler lifestyle. $100k would last a long time in that situation, and it should be well within the ability of most HNers to save up $100k before they're 30.
The prototypical HNer is probably trying to start a business or passionately underpaid at a starup and making a fraction of what they would get paid working a normal job. Yeah, trivial.
> The prototypical HNer is probably trying to start a business or passionately underpaid at a starup and making a fraction of what they would get paid working a normal job. Yeah, trivial.
I myself work at an early stage startup which I'm very passionate about. I still expect to get paid competitively. If you're the prototypical HNer (read: good developer) and you're getting paid under $100k, then you're messing things up.
As for starting a business, by far the most viable path is to do it in your free time until it either: (a) generates revenue you could live off or (b) has enough traction for meaningful VC.
I have a student loan to pay off that's around that amount, and I was employed at a web startup right out of school making a whopping $42,000/yr after taxes. California rent is $1,000/mo. If I paid the whole loan off in a year, I'd be in the negative after interest.
For what it's worth, I did quit; partially because the pay was so low for the 55 hours of week they expected developers to put in.
I know this is only anecdotal, but shit does indeed happen.
After Taxes (federal) Taxes (state) and Rent (insane) more then half of that 100k you reference is gone. Without a gold spoon it's not as easy as you make it seem. Food for thought, I had more disposable income making 65k/Year in Florida then I do making Far more in the Bay Area. I'm not saying that there are not benefits to living here but it's not a golden ticket. Also, clearly you don't have a family to support.
I'm not quite sure you know what the "prototypical HNer" is I live in the Bay Area, I know a lot of people who also spend a lot of time on HN, if I were to make a guess my sample size is larger then yours and I think your assumptions are off but I'll leave it at that.
Like living far from a startup hub in a small city with not much of a tech economy?
I think I've made an excellent work decision. It's extremely cheap to live here. I could easily survive on <$20K/yr, far less actually. You can have the high-expense/high-stress wage-slave life to get your $100K/yr. I'll pass.
I'm not sure how typical that is. It would be interesting to know the demographics of age, occupations, and locations of HNers. One of the reasons that I come here is that I can almost always count on reading posts from non-startup, non-computer-tech, smart and interesting people who have knowledge and viewpoints to share about a wide variety of topics. Just today there were posts to another thread by astronomers and physicists, possibly in their 20s but just as likely not, and unlikely (I would think) to be in SV. My impression is that there's not some diversity here, but a great deal of it, and it's not limited to tech people.
In 2007, I had my car stolen from the Richmond BART parking lot. The police recovered it at something like 2:30am the following Friday night. Since I slept through the call, my car was taken to an impound lot. I had to pay something like $225 to pick it up at 9am the next morning, which included a towing fee, a storage fee (rounded up to 24 hours) and a "fuck you its a weekend" fee. I was only working part time while going to college and it was a painful amount at the time, but I was fortunate enough to be able to put it on a credit card and pay that off from my savings. These impound places seem to be run by people totally devoid of compassion who are more than happy to ruin someones life if there is money to be made doing it.
You can also be charged fees for being a defendant in criminal court, and for being in jail. And can be sent (back) to jail for not (being able to) pay(ing) those fees.
I found out about jail fees a while back from an election website for one of our local politicians... but I don't recall if they wanted to lower the fees because they're unjust and hard on the poor, or raise them to help pay for things.
Reliable, effective, and inexpensive public transit would solve 99% of problems like this. Cars are expensive to own and operate (let alone deal with unforeseen expenses like these). In my city, our "public transit" is a joke that consists of buses that run every hour or so and stop running at 7:30pm—hey, at least they have free wifi?
After seeing Europe's transit system first-hand all summer, it makes little sense to me why the investment has not been made in the USA—especially in larger metropolitan areas like SF.
Cars are not so much expensive to operate as much as they are very risky to operate. From accident deductibles to accidentally taking a right on red because you missed the sign to stuff like getting towed because you didn't catch the no parking sign. I've spent most of my adult life without a car and it's amazing how much stuff is set up to extract income from car owners. Life without a car provides a lot less "accidental fees" as I call them. Things that you can't insure against but could cost you unexpected expense.
And the problem is the current system design forces all people to take on the risk of owning a car—many of whom are exhausted and working multiple jobs just to live from day to day, not the greatest for being alert behind the wheel.
A friend shared that article with me after seeing my comment—purely capitalistic entities operate both idiotically (in terms of good for the whole) and predictably.
"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." — Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book III, Chapter IV, p. 448
Not everyone has the privilege of being able to work remotely on his/her macbook from the comforts of home; some people need their cars for work. You try lugging several hundred pounds of cement, lawn-mowing equipment, a mattress, etc. through your local subway. And SF has BART, caltrain, and MUNI, and while they all smell like urine, they do pretty much get you exactly where you want to go.
> Not everyone has the privilege of being able to work remotely on his/her macbook from the comforts of home; some people need their cars for work. You try lugging several hundred pounds of cement, lawn-mowing equipment, a mattress, etc. through your local subway.
Of course, but most work for the poor (to put it bluntly), does not include carrying things through the subway. It includes showing up on work on-time and working hard—whether that's laying bricks or washing dishes. If your car breaks down, you're out a job. If the subway breaks down (much less likely), your employer or four other employees just might have been on that subway, too.
> And SF has BART, caltrain, and MUNI, and while they all smell like urine, they do pretty much get you exactly where you want to go.
If usage increased, I dare say they would get cleaned up (public trains in former Eastern European countries are even non-smelly). I don't live in SF, though, so I have no experience to back up my hunch.
I spoke to a professional in a pretty powerful job who almost died because for various reasons he didn't have the money to go to the emergency room. This person works for a Fortune 500 company, and a visit to the ER could easily cost $3k out of pocket.
He ended up having an emergency, which required an ambulance... The total bill was $8,000 after insurance!
I wonder how many of them are driving beat up old cars that break down seemingly at random, and hit them with even bigger towing and mechanics' fees to get them fixed?
Just another reason why it actually kinda sucks that most of America is impossible to get around without a car.
A much fairer system would charge people based on their income. Parking tickets, speeding tickets, towing charges, and really fines of any kind, would be much more just if they took into account how much money a person has, so that it stings the same for everyone.
As the article mentions, a poor family getting their only vehicle towed could devastate them, while it's only a mild inconvenience for someone that can afford a limo to pick their towed Ferrari up. That doesn't seem like the optimal system.
But if your "sting" is, let's say, a percent of your 100,000 salary, yeah that's going to not be fun but to get your car back, you'll do it and learn your lesson.
If it's a percent of your $30g salary and you're living paycheck to paycheck while trying to feed 3 kids, the effect is going to be substantially worse. I'm not saying we can just waive penalty fees situationally but the inequality is definitely going to be there regardless.
That's actually what I was told after running a stop light - the fine was relatively small, but the point was that in order to pay it you lost a morning going to traffic court even if you made a million dollars a year. Surprisingly nice cop overall! (This was in Berkeley).
Again, this was in Berkeley (2009 or 2010). The cop said I'd have to go to court and pay the fine there, and told me why. I actually thought it wasn't a bad idea.
Of course -- the fines don't have to relate linearly to one's income, in the same way that taxes aren't linearly related to one's income. But a system that relates fines to some function of income could be a lot more just than the current system.
The Ferrari is probably safe, it would take a while to rig up for towing, and with a high risk of damage at that.
Towing the Civic is a safer bet for the towing company.
My perception is that when towing cars unnecessarily (ie: in places where a fine is more than sufficient and a main thoroughfare isn't being blocked), the mid-range cars are preferentially towed, they can pay and they're not hard to rig up.
Some cars are rear wheel drive, some are all wheel drive. Many expensive cars require a flat bed tow truck. Cars with double clutch transmissions do not have a "neutral" setting and cannot be easily towed (when you put a BMW DCT into neutral it becomes park, for example).
If towed in the wrong way, it can severely damage an expensive car, and considering Ferrari owners can also afford lawyers, it's safer to tow the Civic, especially the towing fee is the same either way.
Every time I see LADOT towing a car it's on a flatbed, they don't literally tow it behind some other car. I imagine it's cheaper to use a flatbed if you are in this business.
Just a couple guesses, but sportier cars will have less space between the ground and the body, making it difficult to raise them at an angle or pull them up a ramp onto a tow bed. They would also probably have more sophisticated anti-theft measures.
Illegally parking in a red zone causes the exact same disruption regardless of how much the car is worth or how much the driver makes. I don't see how it is more fair to fine a poor person less for committing the exact same violation of the code. I don't disagree that the fees are outrageous. I just don't think they should be scaled based on income.
> I don't see how it is more fair to fine a poor person less for committing the exact same violation of the code.
You're familiar with the expression "let the punishment fit the crime"? For a poor person, the fine should reflect an awareness of how much he has, just as it does for the rich person.
> I just don't think they should be scaled based on income.
In a world where everything else is? What incentive would a judge have to levy a single fine that would annoy a rich person but bankrupt a poor one?
Taken to its logical conclusion, the same crime committed by a 15-year-old should be prosecuted the same way as though the offender were 40. But the world isn't arranged that way, for excellent reasons.
Once a girlfriend got ticketed for not wearing her seat belt, the fine was $250. She absolutely couldn't afford it, it would undermine everything she was trying to accomplish. She was in anguish. It never occurred to her that the judge didn't understand her position. I told her to write the judge, acknowledge that she was in the wrong, then explain that the fine was way too high, given her circumstances. The judge immediately lowered the fine to $25.
> You're familiar with the expression "let the punishment fit the crime"?
I am. For the "crime" of parking your car in a spot that it gets towed, the "punishment" is (according to the article) $472. Was the "crime" less for a poor person? no. Same crime. Same punishment.
Taken to its (inverse) logical conclusion, a person that steals $100 from a poor person should do a lot more time than a person that steals $100 from a rich person. But the world isn't arranged that way either, for excellent reasons.
You're overlooking something. Many court judgments specify a fine or jail time. If a person can't afford the fine, he goes to jail. This discriminates against poor people, and it's unconstitutional as well -- it's unequal application of the law.
We can both find examples that support our outlooks, but the fact is that, absent unintended injustices, punishments are tuned to fit the crimes and the criminals as well.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be a fine for parking in no parking areas but these amounts are ridiculous and the author hit it right on the the head. The amounts charged are not in proportion to many people's ability to pay. This imbalance doesn't make society, which we all inhabit btw, any more stable or functional.
Of course, if fines were lowered self entitled assholes would do whatever they please and laugh off the fines. I think the solution is this... first offenses should be a very very small fine and the amounts should double on each subsequent offense. That should stop the self entitlement fairly quickly. Of course, this is assuming the intent is promote proper parking, not to strong-arm money out of people's pockets in order to finance an army of bureaucrats and general wasteful spending. That is the intent...proper parking behavior, right?
I wonder what happens if you make it technically impossible for your car to be towed (for example, if it detects a tow attempt, it "wakes up" and nudges away from the tow vehicle). Or if you make it get out of the impound lot by itself.
Another one of the "one mistake and you're screwed" games, along with health care, and a few others, that the system likes to play with lower-middle class people.
San Francisco is for the rich. Anyone making less than $100k+ can't really afford to live here and even that is cutting it close. I honestly don't see the appeal but I guess some people like it here. This place is like Hollywood but instead of entertainment it's technology.
Is it just me or do their fees seem incredibly high. I've never had my car towed but my not-small city charges $110-140 to tow the car and another $28/day to store it after the first 12 hours.
It's San Francisco, the towing company there charge the fee not to cover their cost, but to make a very hefty profit. Along with SFMTA and their parking tickets bullshit (once I argued for a ticket with photographic evidence of the misplaced meter and a long written letter, but they just simply replied "nope, we don't care, pay up"), together they are nothing less than a government sanctioned cartel.
I once blocked a driveway in SF by accident (tiny garage door and the curb was still there), and I ended up having to pay near $1000 to get my car back a few hours later. Where does the money go? I remember being disturbed that the towing lot appeared to be privately run.
In my city, in addition to paying an usurious fee, you need to get a form at the police traffic division HQ, pay at city hall (30 minute walk through the hood), then bring some slip to one of three scum hole tow yards.
It's also pretty miserable even if you make decent money (mid-100s). Thankfully, I am headed for greener pastures in less than a week. Goodbye to the most dysfunctional and disgusting city I've ever lived in. Amazing place to gain work experience if you work in tech, but a horrible place to live.
Agreed, I've lived at a wide range of places, from nice suburb near Dallas to mid-sized "cool city" like Austin to international metropolis like Shanghai, and SF is by far the least livable place (especially cost adjusted) in my opinion. Nice weather, cool culture, but very, very broken infrastructure and government and pretty much anything that has to do with policy and regulation.
i lived there for 2 years during a non-insane period of time (2006-2007) and made 100k, and everything was a pain in the ass. you literally could not even walk down the street a single time without dealing with some kind of fucked up problem. looking back on it in retrospect, it was even worse than it felt, but i was young, and liked to party. like most people there.
such a beautiful city, too. it really kind of broke the illusion for me. still wonderful to visit though, because you live in a fantasy-travel bubble instead of having to deal with day to day life.
Here in Ohio towing fees are regulated by state law. Some towing companies were trying to get around the maximum fees they could charge by tacking on an extra "administrative fee" just because. Fortunately a judge recently ruled that the idea that these fees were legal was "ludicrous." [1]
Even still, tens of thousands of people were charged these fees and many of them will probably never see their money back. Not to mention the fact that having to pay these fees invariably screwed over some fraction of the victims and led to them losing their jobs. Just getting their money back won't fix that.
Luckily the towing fees here in Ohio seem pretty cheap compared to the Bay Area. I had my car towed once (illegally) and it came out to around $130. But towing companies here aren't required to accept credit cards or checks, so they don't. It is cash only and they don't make change, which is especially aggravating given that the total always works out to some odd amount like $134.72. That's perhaps the sleaziest part of that sleazy business.
Fortunately a bill was recently passed aiming to reduce predatory towing practices. [2] Among the changes it's going to bring is to provide a streamlined process to dispute towing charges; victims of illegal towing can collect double the towing fees. Victims of towing will now also be able to retrieve items from there car without needing to pay a fee. And the bill will now (at last) require that towing companies accept credit cards.
SF is one of the worst cities for income inequality. Add to this that Towing companies are probably the worst scum suckers when it comes to unethical and downright illegal practices [1] and you have a deadly combination that preys on the weak and the poor.
I hear many anaecdotes of Cars being towed in SF for the flimsiest of reasons.
These incidents are often the beginning of the death spiral for people who are living on the edge...
This journalist is upset his car was towed even though he was at fault... While getting your car towed is a terrible experience and impound lots are a massive PITA, I think it's out of line to invoke "inequality" and especially bringing up Michael Brown's death.
Our second car was parked for 9 days next to where we live, but out of sight. Law says can only park 48 hours in one place, but not a problem unless someone complains. Someone complained, for no reason we can think of (plenty of parking in the area.)
We went to load the car with supplies for a big annual event we put on, and...no car. Had been towed almost a week previously. Figured it out a day after the event during biggest snowstorm in several years. Towing, ticket, storage, incredible hassle for no discernible reason whatsoever.
This happened to me about a month after I moved to Phoenix.
I paid less than fifty bucks to get my car out of the impound. My insurance company cut me a check for $800 to fix the cosmetic damage, which I pocketed.
I don't know why this is being downvoted. It's a very good point. For being one of the most heavily-armed societies on Earth, Americans are awfully resigned to their lot.
To be fair, while Americans at large might be considered 'heavily armed' in general, that statement is proportionally untrue for most Californians.
Historically, getting a concealed carry permit was impossible, and open carry is generally prohibited as well.
This was recently overturned in _Peruta v San Diego_ as unconstitutional, but the nut of the matter is that except for criminals and law enforcement, the likelihood of a Californian being armed for bear is minimal.
So long as the mace is California compliant (which I think means 2.5 ounces or less), and they are not felons, minors, or addicted to any narcotics, it is perfectly legal -- so long as they only use it for the purpose of self defense.
Ah, okay now it's clear why the parent was downvoted. Same reason my post was: some idiot didn't like the sentiment, but being unable to engage the thought or present a counterargument, downvotes instead, and convinces himself this is equal to the negation of the idea. Nice work, anonymous fool.
Psfft, tiny violins. The author apparently wants me to sympathize because his car was towed only 15 minutes into the no-parking period in downtown SF. Probably all of the people who were on delayed buses waiting for his car to be towed out of the way thought that the fine should have been a million dollars, plus having his car dropped into the Bay.
Fact is that authentically poor people do not drive. The population of people who drive and park cars in cities skews hugely toward higher incomes.
That is total bullshit, did you not read the article? Plenty of people work in the city and have to drive, because they cannot afford the rent to live there, or needs vehicles since they are part of their livelihood.
What do you know about "authentically poor people"? You think everyone drives BMWs and Teslas in SF and our amazing public transportation (note: sarcasm) manages to service everyone with a low-income job in the city but don't live there?
You can call it bullshit if you want, but it's a fact. First of all, you are absolutely right, BMW and Porsche and Tesla and all other luxury marks are hugely over-represented in SF.
Also, I have data and you don't. Mode share to work, by income:
< $30k: 10% by car
> $100k: 26% by car
Mode share, other than work, by income:
< $30k: 15%
> $100k: 33%
Parking and towing fines are practically irrelevant for the lower income people because they are highly reliant on transit and walking. Lets see an article that complains about injustice in transit fares.
What does this have to do with the observation that when a poor person gets towed, it can throw their whole life off the rails, and when a rich person gets towed, they don't even feel it? Do you think that because more poor people take public transit to work than rich people, that these stories don't matter?
Anything can do that including a health crisis (a far more common cause of financial despair), an arrest, or natural disaster. The entire premise of the article, the title of which states outright that towing fees are the worst part of inequality in America, is completely ridiculous. The worst part about inequality in America is that a million black men are in prison, and parking enforcement isn't even in the top 50 worst things about inequality in America.
What a freaking straw man's argument. Where in the article did the author state it's the "worst part of inequality of America", he merely says it's a part that's under reported and not many people are aware of.
And did you just compare horrible car towing companies to natural disasters? One is OBVIOUSLY WORSE than the other since last time I checked, tornadoes and earthquakes are not caused by greedy men working with corrupt government officially trying to squeeze money out of everyone.
Yes, how dare for people who needs their vehicle for work or does not work the same schedule that's convenient for public transportation right?
And even if 10% of low incomers drive vs 50% of high incomers drive, that's still more low income drivers since there are a lot more people with low income.
So what about the large number of people who drive to the city but do not make six-figures? (you can argue for the low percentage as much as you want, but the absolute number is still significant) Fuck them right?
They drive over an hour and a half a day to their jobs, praying that their car doesn't break down that day. Because it has before, and they're still paying off the payday loan.
Some are commuting daily from as far as Tracy. There are places there you can rent for as low as 800. With a roommate or three you can afford the car to get in to the city or the east bay to work.
I can remember few times I was as angry as I was at a tow yard. My car was stolen, found by the police, and impounded at a tow yard. I went to the tow yard to get the car out, they wanted hundreds of dollars to store the car for the few hours it was there. I went to get some belongings out of the car (I foolishly left my wallet in the car when it was stolen, so I had no cash or credit cards to free the car at that moment), and was accused of stealing my own car by the tow yard employee (as if that somehow makes sense). Later, I returned to pick up the car the next day, these tow yard people had stolen my snow chains out of the car.