Tennessee’s Senate Majority Leader this week introduced legislation to protect automobile owners from excessive vehicle booting.
“The legislation ensures owners’ vehicles are not unfairly immobilized by overzealous parking attendants,” says a press release from Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Williamson County). “To further protect vehicle owners, the bill also proposes new regulations for towing and parking.”
Senate Bill 1692 “decreases from two inches to one and one-half inches the minimum height of the lettering required to be used on the mandatory signage posted on property for which an agreement exists with a person engaged in the business of installing vehicle immobilization devices on parked motor vehicles,” according to its summary.
But according to Johnson’s release, it does more than that protect vehicle owners from having their cars booted.
Johnson said it “generally prohibits” vehicle booting, which it accomplishes by significantly increasing the requirements for parking enforcement agents to boot a vehicle.
“Local governments which chose to allow booting must be responsible for licensing and enforcement compliant with minimum standards set in the legislation,” the release noted. “For example, under the bill, to boot a car in a commercial parking lot a licensed parking attendant must be present, identifiable as an employee and available to remove the boot within 30 minutes of a driver’s call.”
Further, it protects Tennesseans from having their vehicles unjustly towed by requiring tow truck companies to promptly notify vehicle owners if their vehicle is being towed. It also requires tow truck companies to release vehicles back into the custody of their owners in the event that the vehicle is being towed, but the vehicle owner shows up before the tow truck has left the parking lot. That requirement comes with the caveat that tow truck companies cannot charge the vehicle owner more than $100 for the release of the vehicle.
“This legislation will protect vehicle owners in Tennessee from bad actors seeking to profit off of immobilizing and confiscating vehicles,” said Johnson. “I’ve received complaints from many constituents who have had to go through unreasonably long and expensive processes to regain control of their vehicles which were unfairly immobilized or towed. Unfortunately, our current laws do not provide legal recourse to punish parking enforcers engaged in certain nefarious practices. This bill targets those bad actors and protects Tennessee vehicle owners.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter/X.
Photo “Booted” by Kendrick Hang CCND2.0.
I’m not buying the “complaints from constituènts” angle here. So…. which legislator did this personally affect?…. Senators don’t usually pick on business segments unless that segment did something bad to them.