11 ms·

Philly pays $30K to two 'courtesy' tow victims, but class-action suit continues

112 points by jawns 4y ago

joebob42 4y ago
It's weirdly both such a big number and such a small number. 15k is a ton for many people and probably well more than the inconvenience this one guy suffered. But it's insubstantial compared to the cost of this case turning into a class action and getting the city to actually have to change something, and it sounds like it's insubstantial compared to the total harm of this program. Especially cases like the woman who was nearly arrested.
- beachy 4y ago
  Sounds like it was too small at the end of the day. 2 people accepted and 2 others are proceeding with class action suit. They failed in their goal of snuffing out the class action suit. Maybe $30k would have been enough. Though that might have attracted new litigants. Clearly a lose lose for Philly, which is not surprising with such a shit show of a policy.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    The problem with doing this to random cars is some of the people will be rich enough to say no!
reactspa 4y ago
chickenpotpie 4y ago
The idea of a courtesy tow is such a violation of justice where the government can dole out a punishment worse than the law allows without a trial. The police are effectively the judge jury and executioner. They find you guilty of some law, sentence you to the punishment of finding your car and any consequences of it being there, and execute it by hiding it. This is one of those weird circumstances where I would rather just be charged with a crime.
linspace 4y ago
> Henin was placed in handcuffs because police in New Jersey thought the car was stolen. That was because, months earlier, the car had been courtesy towed in West Philly, and she reported it stolen as police advised. Henin followed up with Philadelphia police when she later found her car, but they mistakenly left it in the stolen-vehicle database. It could be the argument for a sitcom. Not funny in real life when police is pointing a gun at you.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  More like a dystopian horror movie
  - klodolph 4y ago
    I think I’ve seen this kind of farce happen often enough in sitcoms. Odd Couple “My Strife In Court”, Seinfeld “The Parking Garage”, The Golden Girls “Ladies of the Evening”. People are always getting arrested in sitcoms for dumb reasons.
    - Pulcinella 4y ago
      This also happens in the opening of “Brazil” which is a dystopian nightmare with a small amount of humor and plenty of farce. “Oops the dystopian government black bagged the wrong person because of a typo. So sorry! Here’s a check for the inconvenience.”
      - colpabar 4y ago
        The scene with the widow asking about her husband's body is foundational in my distrust and hatred of bureaucracy.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  They didn’t check the license and registration of the vehicle?
abeppu 4y ago
The article mentions two women who had each reported their cars stolen after the "courtesy" tow which makes one wonder -- _is_ this theft? If not, why? Does it matter if it's done by a private towing company?
- petesergeant 4y ago
  > _is_ this theft? If not, why? No, the asset is being moved, not retained by the mover, and it's ostensibly being done for the public good (edit: see the link further down the thread for why this matters). If _eminent domain_ isn't theft, this definitely isn't. > Does it matter if it's done by a private towing company? Not if they're deputized.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    With eminent domain can they move a house to a new location, the first the owner hears of it is when they see their house missing?
  - abeppu 4y ago
    > No, the asset is being moved, not retained by the mover I don't get this argument. If I take something which doesn't belong to me, say from a store, and move it two blocks away and put it down, I would still be stealing right? Is the perpetrator required to 'retain' something for it to be theft? If I'm caught while stealing and drop the item, "I just moved it without the owners consent" probably isn't going to cover me. > If _eminent domain_ isn't theft, this definitely isn't. Clearly I'm not especially acquainted with the law, but when the government exercises eminent domain doesn't it have to go through some legal process? And my understanding is that owners must be compensated for the property that is taken under eminent domain.
    - abeppu 4y ago
      As a followup on the "ostensibly being done for the public good" part, the article describes the courtesy towing practice in a way that sounds like it's sometimes for private uses: "moves vehicles from legal parking spots for special events, construction or emergencies". I have to assume that the organizers of those special events or the firms involved with that construction have paid for some permit which is meant to give them exclusive use of the street parking, in which case it sounds like the public good is only indirectly from the revenue from those permits. Apparently the ability of municipal governments to exercise eminent domain solely for the purpose of increasing its revenue was only established by a court case in 2005. So in 2004 would you have agreed that courtesy towing for a private special event or private construction project was possibly theft? Or at least possibly a 5th amendment violation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
Spooky23 4y ago
I feel this validates my “no Philly” policy. I grew up in NYC, and have a certain immunity to deal with aloof, hostile or otherwise obnoxious city officials. I’ve been to Philly on business and pleasure a few times and… forget it, it’s a whole other level. One wedding, literally 30% of the guest had a ticket, tow or other drama. Life is too short. Philly makes Jersey look good.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  PPA is somehow simultaneously notorious for overzealously ticketing and for completely ignoring cars parked in crosswalks, bike lanes, sidewalks, etc. It’s the most bizarrely inconsistent government agency.
  - paleotrope 4y ago
    You are overlooking the possibility that the illegally parked cars are owned by the connected, like police and city officials. This is all normal, every day, corruption.
petesergeant 4y ago
In related "money changes police tactics" news: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/police-misconduct-insurance-settlements-reform/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...
- metadat 4y ago
  Truly disgusting. Submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32872437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32872437
quickthrower2 4y ago
So it sounds like car towing is outsourced to some kind of bounty hunting operation of private companies and no one know their arse from their elbow about where cars are moved. Pretty stupid. It would be easy to fix even with pen, paper and phones. But there should be a signed paper trail about the move. And dropping the cars off in illegal spots, well the fine should go to the “driver” not the car. I guess they are too lazy to change this or it is profiting someone personally?
- bdhess 4y ago
  If they got “courtesy towed” they were already parked illegally. (Used to live in Philly, it happened to me once.)
  - MerelyMortal 4y ago
    I'm inclined to believe the article which lists other criteria that are out of the control of the driver for reasons of a courtesy tow.
bell-cot 4y ago
> Problem is, the city doesn’t have a modern, reliable way to track the vehicles’ new locations, leaving owners wandering the streets for days or weeks, looking for their cars. They could do vastly better than the status quo with century-old multi-part paper form technology. "White Copy - Central PD Tow Office", "Yellow Copy - Precinct PD Tow Clerk", "Pink Copy - DMV, to mail to vehicle owner", ... This kind of worse-than-brain-dead sh*t-show is why so many people emotionally identify with "the government is the problem", "de-fund the police", and similar slogans.
- mjhay 4y ago
  > This kind of worse-than-brain-dead sh*t-show is why so many people emotionally identify with "the government is the problem", "de-fund the police", and similar slogans. Those people are right. That is not just emotional, that is rational - that is the only sane attitude towards the fact that these groups with the power of violence over society are so incompetent or even malicious.
  - eyelidlessness 4y ago
    Us people have some nuance and quite a bit of disagreement amongst ourselves. Personally I’m all in on defunding the police, but (I still feel weird saying this even after almost six years as a former anarchist) I don’t believe the government is inherently the problem, even if this particular implementation of it is obviously a problem. Another version of government could and should use its power to prevent these kinds of abuses rather than enable and benefit from them. But that form of government would look radically different from the one we have.
    - fallingknife 4y ago
      Prevent who from doing these abuses? I only seem to have these types of problems with the government. I have been illegally towed before. I got a letter from the IRS a few months back saying I owe another $1000 of taxes for reasons I can't understand. The letter says call a phone number if you don't understand. I have called it at least 50 times and it always gives me a recording that they can't take my call now. I will probably just have to pay. Only the government can do this to me because they are the only organization I have to obey.
rmatt2000 4y ago
I can think of a spec for a simple application that would fix all the problems associated with "courtesy [sic] towing". However, it also seems pretty clear that any city government that would engage in "courtesy [sic] towing" probably has zero interest in fixing it.
jtokoph 4y ago
A similar thing happened to my wife and me during a vacation. We had reserved a car via Enterprise Car Share (like Zipcar). When we arrived to the designated car share space, the car was missing. We called Enterprise who said the car had been properly returned by the previous customer days before, so it should be there. They paid for us to get an Uber to another available car, so we were only delayed and hour or so. They did follow up with us and it turned out that the city had done a "courtesy tow" because the car was parked on a parade route the previous day. I'm not sure how they eventually found it, but they said that they couldn't activate the GPS tracking without delay and lots of approvals because of customer privacy issues.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  Done they put signs or cones up or something? It’s crazy that this keeps happening.
- 14 4y ago
  That is actually a bit reassuring that they can not just at a whim turn on gps tracking.
- abeppu 4y ago
  It's good if they can't restrict activating GPS because of customer privacy issues but I would think the time between one customer returning it and the next customer picking it up ought to be fair game?
  - gruez 4y ago
    That would be the case if you thought it all the way through and the manager had discretion, but what probably happened was that the company had a blanket policy of "no activating GPS trackers without director approval" that prevented that from occurring.
lolinder 4y ago
> That’s the Philly euphemism for what is formally known as “relocation towing” — when the police department, Philadelphia Parking Authority, or a private towing company moves vehicles from legal parking spots for special events, construction or emergencies. I can see needing to move a vehicle in an emergency, but for special events and construction this shouldn't be needed in most cases. The city knows months in advance the date on which the streets need to be clear. They should plaster the neighborhood in warning notices a month before the event, then go through again the night before to check for stragglers who'd forgotten. If people seriously end up thinking their car got stolen, there's a massive failure of communication. My thought should be "oops, I forgot about the event", not "where the hell is my car?!"
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  That’s what happens in my area. Signs go up a week or so in advance saying you’ll be towed if parked there past date X.
  - avn2109 4y ago
    The "posted signs" thing is an unimpressive solution in 2022 imho and they should really email you or text you "hey move your car please" etc. As a thought experiment, imagine that the city government was motivated to find a car's owner for some reason, perhaps as a suspect or witness of a serious crime etc. Meaning if they have your plate number and think you're a murderer, they will definitely find you and communicate with you (the message that they communicate will be "come to the police station"). I claim this is a proof by construction that they could communicate with you by some method other than posted signs, if they actually wanted to. And they just choose to do the laziest possible "post signs" solution because of basically incompetence/laziness, not because there's no other way for them to identify and communicate with a car's owner.
    - acomjean 4y ago
      In my city at least the weekly street cleaning requires you to move your car weekly. So signs posted a week ahead are typically not as bad. Though the police did once us my apartment buzzer to tell me to move my car, it didn’t always happen (I’ve been towed twice in my 2 decades in the city).. Also when they tow you it’s to a lot, they don’t just dump you on some other street like in Philly.
mbil 4y ago
Ah yes, reminded me of when my motorcycle was parked near 7th and South St. There was construction I guess, and my motorcycle was apparently courtesy lifted to the sidewalk. I returned from vacation to ~$700 of tickets for the bike being on the sidewalk.
- hayd 4y ago
  did you fight it?
- johndoughy 4y ago
  Did you end up paying the tickets or fighting it? Reminds me of when my motorcycle was towed from my apartment complex. It was held by a private towing company, but for some reason the city suspected the bike was stolen, so the tow lot (allegedly) couldn't release it until the city completed their 'investigation'. Meanwhile I was on the hook for every day that it sat in the tow yard (not to mention the rental car to get to work), but powerless to get it out. Eventually the city cleared it and I owed like 2k. I desperately wish I fought it but for some reason I just paid it...
  - mbil 4y ago
    I fought it which basically entailed me going to some city government building and showing the guy I was out of town for some of the days and so wasn’t able to keep an eye on my bike. He essentially told me to pound sand and so I ended up paying it. The absurdity tempered the fury.
School-Cotton 4y ago
I hate free street parking but this is so bizarre and unfair that I actually feel sympathy for the parkers.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  It is amazing how much land is taken over for the parking of private vehicles.
  - furjrudjrufurrj 4y ago
- lostlogin 4y ago
  It is amazing how much public land is taken over for the parking of private vehicles.
  - gruez 4y ago
    It's public land used for the purposes of facilitating transportation using private vehicles. If you think about it that way there really isn't anything different between what you described and using public land to provide thoroughfares for private vehicles.
    - School-Cotton 4y ago
      > using public land to provide thoroughfares for private vehicles Yes, we should also largely stop doing that (or at least frantically reduce how much land is dedicated to that purpose).
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      > It's public land used for the purposes of facilitating transportation using private vehicles. If you think about it that way there really isn't anything different between what you described and using public land to provide thoroughfares for private vehicles. Parked cars are hindering transport for cars and bikes. My street has cars parked on both sides and at times there is only space for travel in one direction. So two thirds of the road width is dedicated to parking and it’s not facilitating transport.
tzs 4y ago
> That’s the Philly euphemism for what is formally known as “relocation towing” — when the police department, Philadelphia Parking Authority, or a private towing company moves vehicles from legal parking spots for special events, construction or emergencies. > Problem is, the city doesn’t have a modern, reliable way to track the vehicles’ new locations, leaving owners wandering the streets for days or weeks, looking for their cars. This would normally be the part where I (and probably half the other people reading HN) would say that building a modern, reliable way to track this is not hard. We'd go on to outline something involving a database, probably a mobile app for the tow truck drivers, and probably a web site for car owners. We'd probably say this is a small project that could be done by a handful of developers in a few weeks and would be fairly inexpensive. Others would then tell us that we are vastly underestimating the difficulties of dealing with the mess that city IT tends to be, and that "fairly inexpensive" would still be expensive enough that there would have to be budget meetings and studies, and maybe the web site would need to support multiple languages, and a ton of other things we've overlooked. So I'm not going to suggest that a modern, reliable way to track this would be easy. But why does it have to be modern? What would be wrong with an old-fashioned approach? Require the tow truck drivers to report the license plate numbers and drop off locations and drop off date/time to the police or perhaps some other government entity which can add the information to a list. When an owner finds their car missing and contacts the police, the police can check the list and tell the owner where the car is and remove it from that list, and add it to a log of past courtesy tows along with a timestamp. If the owner finds that their car got ticketed at the new location before they could reasonably retrieve it the log of past courtesy tows could be used to prove that the owner did not park at the new location. This requires: 1. Tow truck drivers have a way to report the information. Voice or text from their cell phone to a phone number maintained by the police specifically for this would cover that. 2. The police need to maintain a list of these reports. This can be handled by having them copy the information to an index card and file the card alphabetically by license number in a card file. 3. Car owners or police called by car owners need a way to check the list. They can call the same number from #1, and the people that file incoming reports can also handle checking the card file. 4. The police needs to maintain the log. That's another, bigger, card file. So basically we need a phone line, someone who will answer that phone, a file clerk with enough time to handle these, enough card files to hold the recent records, probably a shelf or two in an office to hold those card files, and a bigger card storage system for the historical log.
buildbot 4y ago
Do they use flatbeds for the AWD drive cars? If not then they are causing huge amounts of damage to the differentials and drive train...
donretag 4y ago
This occurred to me in the 2000s in NYC. Repeated (I kept on getting "disconnected") calls to 311 always led to an operator that proceeded to victim blame me. "Are you sure you do not have parking tickets?", "Are you positive you have no parking tickets?". There were "No Parking xxxday for repaving" that were posted in the (somewhat desolate, few residences) area after I have parked. Even after explaining this situation to the operators, they still insisted that the city must have towed my car because I did not pay my parking tickets. Three/four operators, same line. They had no idea where they towed my car. It took my father and I over an hour, splitting the streets, walking the neighborhood and finding the car.
daveoc64 4y ago
This is relatively common in the UK, although there are clearer requirements to put up signs in advance of restrictions being imposed. London has a centralised system where you can check if your vehicle has been removed to a pound/relocated: https://trace.london/ https://trace.london/
fallingknife 4y ago
This happened to me in SF. It was pride parade day, and I parked in a perfectly legal spot. But when I came back a couple of hours later all the cars had been towed and there were a bunch of special event vehicles parked there. The cops had put up a special event no parking notice, but by law that has to be done 48 hours in advance. They didn't tow me to another spot like this, though. Just towed me to impound where I had to pay about $500 to get my car back.
latchkey 4y ago
I've been fighting my city over bullshit $50-$110 parking tickets that are intended to curb homeless people living in their cars. That's right, kicking people when they are down. So far, I've won 4 of the tickets and a 5th is pending the process. The thing is that you have to pay the ticket, then fight it once (they automatically vote against you), then you appeal it, where they take a closer look at things, and then pass judgement in my favor. At times, I'm out hundreds of dollars and it takes 3-6 months for it to all resolve itself. I'm tired of it.
- rascul 4y ago
  You have to pay before fighting it? That seems odd to me. The few tickets I received (Maryland and Mississippi) I had the option to pay or to go to court to fight it.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    Yea, that's the messed up bit. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, this puts a huge dent in your cash flow. I'm convinced this is intentional.
ftth_finland 4y ago
In Finland, if your car gets towed due to, for example, street cleaning, you text a number with your license plate and you get a reply with an approximate location.
StopHammoTime 4y ago
The thing that boggles my mind in regard to this is that they don’t take them to an impound lot. In Australia, if your car is towed someone then has custody of it. I guess initially the “courtesy” part is that it’s meant to be easily findable. But it sounds like having a centralised place where you can get your car and you won’t get fined sounds like less effort the the “helpful” solution. If the local government can’t afford to tow cars to an impound lot and pay those fees, then they can’t afford to have local events. This is simply a case of having your cake and eating it too. Local government wants all the benefits of having events with none of the negatives (like actually planning and being responsible). I actually don’t understand why there is no system where a note is issued by the tower that informs whoever that this car was moved as part of a courtesy tow and it is not subject to fines. I don’t mean a centralised system, I mean a sticker you can just bang on there. There should also be an option where you could call the DMV and they can “page” the owner to advise them were their car is located if someone is being inconvenienced by an unwanted car that has been towed. There are so many simple options that won’t fix the issue but at least prevent it from being hellish. The fact that nothing has been done makes me feel like this is actually quite intentional on part of the parking authority for revenue reasons.

112 points by jawns 4y ago

It's weirdly both such a big number and such a small number. 15k is a ton for many people and probably well more than the inconvenience this one guy suffered. But it's insubstantial compared to the cost of this case turning into a class action and getting the city to actually have to change something, and it sounds like it's insubstantial compared to the total harm of this program. Especially cases like the woman who was nearly arrested.

beachy 4y ago
Sounds like it was too small at the end of the day. 2 people accepted and 2 others are proceeding with class action suit. They failed in their goal of snuffing out the class action suit. Maybe $30k would have been enough. Though that might have attracted new litigants. Clearly a lose lose for Philly, which is not surprising with such a shit show of a policy.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  The problem with doing this to random cars is some of the people will be rich enough to say no!

reactspa 4y ago

chickenpotpie 4y ago

The idea of a courtesy tow is such a violation of justice where the government can dole out a punishment worse than the law allows without a trial. The police are effectively the judge jury and executioner. They find you guilty of some law, sentence you to the punishment of finding your car and any consequences of it being there, and execute it by hiding it. This is one of those weird circumstances where I would rather just be charged with a crime.

linspace 4y ago

> Henin was placed in handcuffs because police in New Jersey thought the car was stolen. That was because, months earlier, the car had been courtesy towed in West Philly, and she reported it stolen as police advised. Henin followed up with Philadelphia police when she later found her car, but they mistakenly left it in the stolen-vehicle database. It could be the argument for a sitcom. Not funny in real life when police is pointing a gun at you.

quickthrower2 4y ago
More like a dystopian horror movie
- klodolph 4y ago
  I think I’ve seen this kind of farce happen often enough in sitcoms. Odd Couple “My Strife In Court”, Seinfeld “The Parking Garage”, The Golden Girls “Ladies of the Evening”. People are always getting arrested in sitcoms for dumb reasons.
  - Pulcinella 4y ago
    This also happens in the opening of “Brazil” which is a dystopian nightmare with a small amount of humor and plenty of farce. “Oops the dystopian government black bagged the wrong person because of a typo. So sorry! Here’s a check for the inconvenience.”
    - colpabar 4y ago
      The scene with the widow asking about her husband's body is foundational in my distrust and hatred of bureaucracy.
2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
They didn’t check the license and registration of the vehicle?

abeppu 4y ago

The article mentions two women who had each reported their cars stolen after the "courtesy" tow which makes one wonder -- _is_ this theft? If not, why? Does it matter if it's done by a private towing company?

petesergeant 4y ago
> _is_ this theft? If not, why? No, the asset is being moved, not retained by the mover, and it's ostensibly being done for the public good (edit: see the link further down the thread for why this matters). If _eminent domain_ isn't theft, this definitely isn't. > Does it matter if it's done by a private towing company? Not if they're deputized.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  With eminent domain can they move a house to a new location, the first the owner hears of it is when they see their house missing?
- abeppu 4y ago
  > No, the asset is being moved, not retained by the mover I don't get this argument. If I take something which doesn't belong to me, say from a store, and move it two blocks away and put it down, I would still be stealing right? Is the perpetrator required to 'retain' something for it to be theft? If I'm caught while stealing and drop the item, "I just moved it without the owners consent" probably isn't going to cover me. > If _eminent domain_ isn't theft, this definitely isn't. Clearly I'm not especially acquainted with the law, but when the government exercises eminent domain doesn't it have to go through some legal process? And my understanding is that owners must be compensated for the property that is taken under eminent domain.
  - abeppu 4y ago
    As a followup on the "ostensibly being done for the public good" part, the article describes the courtesy towing practice in a way that sounds like it's sometimes for private uses: "moves vehicles from legal parking spots for special events, construction or emergencies". I have to assume that the organizers of those special events or the firms involved with that construction have paid for some permit which is meant to give them exclusive use of the street parking, in which case it sounds like the public good is only indirectly from the revenue from those permits. Apparently the ability of municipal governments to exercise eminent domain solely for the purpose of increasing its revenue was only established by a court case in 2005. So in 2004 would you have agreed that courtesy towing for a private special event or private construction project was possibly theft? Or at least possibly a 5th amendment violation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

Spooky23 4y ago

I feel this validates my “no Philly” policy. I grew up in NYC, and have a certain immunity to deal with aloof, hostile or otherwise obnoxious city officials. I’ve been to Philly on business and pleasure a few times and… forget it, it’s a whole other level. One wedding, literally 30% of the guest had a ticket, tow or other drama. Life is too short. Philly makes Jersey look good.

ryukafalz 4y ago
PPA is somehow simultaneously notorious for overzealously ticketing and for completely ignoring cars parked in crosswalks, bike lanes, sidewalks, etc. It’s the most bizarrely inconsistent government agency.
- paleotrope 4y ago
  You are overlooking the possibility that the illegally parked cars are owned by the connected, like police and city officials. This is all normal, every day, corruption.

petesergeant 4y ago

In related "money changes police tactics" news: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/police-misconduct-insurance-settlements-reform/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...

metadat 4y ago
Truly disgusting. Submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32872437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32872437

quickthrower2 4y ago

So it sounds like car towing is outsourced to some kind of bounty hunting operation of private companies and no one know their arse from their elbow about where cars are moved. Pretty stupid. It would be easy to fix even with pen, paper and phones. But there should be a signed paper trail about the move. And dropping the cars off in illegal spots, well the fine should go to the “driver” not the car. I guess they are too lazy to change this or it is profiting someone personally?

bdhess 4y ago
If they got “courtesy towed” they were already parked illegally. (Used to live in Philly, it happened to me once.)
- MerelyMortal 4y ago
  I'm inclined to believe the article which lists other criteria that are out of the control of the driver for reasons of a courtesy tow.

bell-cot 4y ago

> Problem is, the city doesn’t have a modern, reliable way to track the vehicles’ new locations, leaving owners wandering the streets for days or weeks, looking for their cars. They could do vastly better than the status quo with century-old multi-part paper form technology. "White Copy - Central PD Tow Office", "Yellow Copy - Precinct PD Tow Clerk", "Pink Copy - DMV, to mail to vehicle owner", ... This kind of worse-than-brain-dead sh*t-show is why so many people emotionally identify with "the government is the problem", "de-fund the police", and similar slogans.

mjhay 4y ago
> This kind of worse-than-brain-dead sh*t-show is why so many people emotionally identify with "the government is the problem", "de-fund the police", and similar slogans. Those people are right. That is not just emotional, that is rational - that is the only sane attitude towards the fact that these groups with the power of violence over society are so incompetent or even malicious.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  Us people have some nuance and quite a bit of disagreement amongst ourselves. Personally I’m all in on defunding the police, but (I still feel weird saying this even after almost six years as a former anarchist) I don’t believe the government is inherently the problem, even if this particular implementation of it is obviously a problem. Another version of government could and should use its power to prevent these kinds of abuses rather than enable and benefit from them. But that form of government would look radically different from the one we have.
  - fallingknife 4y ago
    Prevent who from doing these abuses? I only seem to have these types of problems with the government. I have been illegally towed before. I got a letter from the IRS a few months back saying I owe another $1000 of taxes for reasons I can't understand. The letter says call a phone number if you don't understand. I have called it at least 50 times and it always gives me a recording that they can't take my call now. I will probably just have to pay. Only the government can do this to me because they are the only organization I have to obey.

rmatt2000 4y ago

I can think of a spec for a simple application that would fix all the problems associated with "courtesy [sic] towing". However, it also seems pretty clear that any city government that would engage in "courtesy [sic] towing" probably has zero interest in fixing it.

jtokoph 4y ago

A similar thing happened to my wife and me during a vacation. We had reserved a car via Enterprise Car Share (like Zipcar). When we arrived to the designated car share space, the car was missing. We called Enterprise who said the car had been properly returned by the previous customer days before, so it should be there. They paid for us to get an Uber to another available car, so we were only delayed and hour or so. They did follow up with us and it turned out that the city had done a "courtesy tow" because the car was parked on a parade route the previous day. I'm not sure how they eventually found it, but they said that they couldn't activate the GPS tracking without delay and lots of approvals because of customer privacy issues.

lostlogin 4y ago
Done they put signs or cones up or something? It’s crazy that this keeps happening.
14 4y ago
That is actually a bit reassuring that they can not just at a whim turn on gps tracking.
abeppu 4y ago
It's good if they can't restrict activating GPS because of customer privacy issues but I would think the time between one customer returning it and the next customer picking it up ought to be fair game?
- gruez 4y ago
  That would be the case if you thought it all the way through and the manager had discretion, but what probably happened was that the company had a blanket policy of "no activating GPS trackers without director approval" that prevented that from occurring.

lolinder 4y ago

ceejayoz 4y ago
That’s what happens in my area. Signs go up a week or so in advance saying you’ll be towed if parked there past date X.
- avn2109 4y ago
  The "posted signs" thing is an unimpressive solution in 2022 imho and they should really email you or text you "hey move your car please" etc. As a thought experiment, imagine that the city government was motivated to find a car's owner for some reason, perhaps as a suspect or witness of a serious crime etc. Meaning if they have your plate number and think you're a murderer, they will definitely find you and communicate with you (the message that they communicate will be "come to the police station"). I claim this is a proof by construction that they could communicate with you by some method other than posted signs, if they actually wanted to. And they just choose to do the laziest possible "post signs" solution because of basically incompetence/laziness, not because there's no other way for them to identify and communicate with a car's owner.
  - acomjean 4y ago
    In my city at least the weekly street cleaning requires you to move your car weekly. So signs posted a week ahead are typically not as bad. Though the police did once us my apartment buzzer to tell me to move my car, it didn’t always happen (I’ve been towed twice in my 2 decades in the city).. Also when they tow you it’s to a lot, they don’t just dump you on some other street like in Philly.

mbil 4y ago

Ah yes, reminded me of when my motorcycle was parked near 7th and South St. There was construction I guess, and my motorcycle was apparently courtesy lifted to the sidewalk. I returned from vacation to ~$700 of tickets for the bike being on the sidewalk.

hayd 4y ago
did you fight it?
johndoughy 4y ago
Did you end up paying the tickets or fighting it? Reminds me of when my motorcycle was towed from my apartment complex. It was held by a private towing company, but for some reason the city suspected the bike was stolen, so the tow lot (allegedly) couldn't release it until the city completed their 'investigation'. Meanwhile I was on the hook for every day that it sat in the tow yard (not to mention the rental car to get to work), but powerless to get it out. Eventually the city cleared it and I owed like 2k. I desperately wish I fought it but for some reason I just paid it...
- mbil 4y ago
  I fought it which basically entailed me going to some city government building and showing the guy I was out of town for some of the days and so wasn’t able to keep an eye on my bike. He essentially told me to pound sand and so I ended up paying it. The absurdity tempered the fury.

School-Cotton 4y ago

I hate free street parking but this is so bizarre and unfair that I actually feel sympathy for the parkers.

lostlogin 4y ago
It is amazing how much land is taken over for the parking of private vehicles.
- furjrudjrufurrj 4y ago
lostlogin 4y ago
It is amazing how much public land is taken over for the parking of private vehicles.
- gruez 4y ago
  It's public land used for the purposes of facilitating transportation using private vehicles. If you think about it that way there really isn't anything different between what you described and using public land to provide thoroughfares for private vehicles.
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    > using public land to provide thoroughfares for private vehicles Yes, we should also largely stop doing that (or at least frantically reduce how much land is dedicated to that purpose).
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    > It's public land used for the purposes of facilitating transportation using private vehicles. If you think about it that way there really isn't anything different between what you described and using public land to provide thoroughfares for private vehicles. Parked cars are hindering transport for cars and bikes. My street has cars parked on both sides and at times there is only space for travel in one direction. So two thirds of the road width is dedicated to parking and it’s not facilitating transport.

tzs 4y ago

> That’s the Philly euphemism for what is formally known as “relocation towing” — when the police department, Philadelphia Parking Authority, or a private towing company moves vehicles from legal parking spots for special events, construction or emergencies. > Problem is, the city doesn’t have a modern, reliable way to track the vehicles’ new locations, leaving owners wandering the streets for days or weeks, looking for their cars. This would normally be the part where I (and probably half the other people reading HN) would say that building a modern, reliable way to track this is not hard. We'd go on to outline something involving a database, probably a mobile app for the tow truck drivers, and probably a web site for car owners. We'd probably say this is a small project that could be done by a handful of developers in a few weeks and would be fairly inexpensive. Others would then tell us that we are vastly underestimating the difficulties of dealing with the mess that city IT tends to be, and that "fairly inexpensive" would still be expensive enough that there would have to be budget meetings and studies, and maybe the web site would need to support multiple languages, and a ton of other things we've overlooked. So I'm not going to suggest that a modern, reliable way to track this would be easy. But why does it have to be modern? What would be wrong with an old-fashioned approach? Require the tow truck drivers to report the license plate numbers and drop off locations and drop off date/time to the police or perhaps some other government entity which can add the information to a list. When an owner finds their car missing and contacts the police, the police can check the list and tell the owner where the car is and remove it from that list, and add it to a log of past courtesy tows along with a timestamp. If the owner finds that their car got ticketed at the new location before they could reasonably retrieve it the log of past courtesy tows could be used to prove that the owner did not park at the new location. This requires: 1. Tow truck drivers have a way to report the information. Voice or text from their cell phone to a phone number maintained by the police specifically for this would cover that. 2. The police need to maintain a list of these reports. This can be handled by having them copy the information to an index card and file the card alphabetically by license number in a card file. 3. Car owners or police called by car owners need a way to check the list. They can call the same number from #1, and the people that file incoming reports can also handle checking the card file. 4. The police needs to maintain the log. That's another, bigger, card file. So basically we need a phone line, someone who will answer that phone, a file clerk with enough time to handle these, enough card files to hold the recent records, probably a shelf or two in an office to hold those card files, and a bigger card storage system for the historical log.

buildbot 4y ago

Do they use flatbeds for the AWD drive cars? If not then they are causing huge amounts of damage to the differentials and drive train...

donretag 4y ago

This occurred to me in the 2000s in NYC. Repeated (I kept on getting "disconnected") calls to 311 always led to an operator that proceeded to victim blame me. "Are you sure you do not have parking tickets?", "Are you positive you have no parking tickets?". There were "No Parking xxxday for repaving" that were posted in the (somewhat desolate, few residences) area after I have parked. Even after explaining this situation to the operators, they still insisted that the city must have towed my car because I did not pay my parking tickets. Three/four operators, same line. They had no idea where they towed my car. It took my father and I over an hour, splitting the streets, walking the neighborhood and finding the car.

daveoc64 4y ago

This is relatively common in the UK, although there are clearer requirements to put up signs in advance of restrictions being imposed. London has a centralised system where you can check if your vehicle has been removed to a pound/relocated: https://trace.london/ https://trace.london/

fallingknife 4y ago

This happened to me in SF. It was pride parade day, and I parked in a perfectly legal spot. But when I came back a couple of hours later all the cars had been towed and there were a bunch of special event vehicles parked there. The cops had put up a special event no parking notice, but by law that has to be done 48 hours in advance. They didn't tow me to another spot like this, though. Just towed me to impound where I had to pay about $500 to get my car back.

latchkey 4y ago

I've been fighting my city over bullshit $50-$110 parking tickets that are intended to curb homeless people living in their cars. That's right, kicking people when they are down. So far, I've won 4 of the tickets and a 5th is pending the process. The thing is that you have to pay the ticket, then fight it once (they automatically vote against you), then you appeal it, where they take a closer look at things, and then pass judgement in my favor. At times, I'm out hundreds of dollars and it takes 3-6 months for it to all resolve itself. I'm tired of it.

rascul 4y ago
You have to pay before fighting it? That seems odd to me. The few tickets I received (Maryland and Mississippi) I had the option to pay or to go to court to fight it.
- latchkey 4y ago
  Yea, that's the messed up bit. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, this puts a huge dent in your cash flow. I'm convinced this is intentional.

ftth_finland 4y ago

In Finland, if your car gets towed due to, for example, street cleaning, you text a number with your license plate and you get a reply with an approximate location.

StopHammoTime 4y ago

The thing that boggles my mind in regard to this is that they don’t take them to an impound lot. In Australia, if your car is towed someone then has custody of it. I guess initially the “courtesy” part is that it’s meant to be easily findable. But it sounds like having a centralised place where you can get your car and you won’t get fined sounds like less effort the the “helpful” solution. If the local government can’t afford to tow cars to an impound lot and pay those fees, then they can’t afford to have local events. This is simply a case of having your cake and eating it too. Local government wants all the benefits of having events with none of the negatives (like actually planning and being responsible). I actually don’t understand why there is no system where a note is issued by the tower that informs whoever that this car was moved as part of a courtesy tow and it is not subject to fines. I don’t mean a centralised system, I mean a sticker you can just bang on there. There should also be an option where you could call the DMV and they can “page” the owner to advise them were their car is located if someone is being inconvenienced by an unwanted car that has been towed. There are so many simple options that won’t fix the issue but at least prevent it from being hellish. The fact that nothing has been done makes me feel like this is actually quite intentional on part of the parking authority for revenue reasons.