I’m lying in my bed on a peaceful Saturday night when, all of a sudden, I hear a grinding, agitating rumble. With annoyance, I peek through my blinds to see not one, not two but three tow trucks attempting to tow a singular vehicle — at the inconvenient and unnecessary time of 10 p.m.

Towing in our college town has long been a problem. No matter if it’s fall or winter, rain or shine, these tow trucks constantly swim through our streets looking for their next victim. While towing isn’t inherently bad, it becomes a problem when companies start exhibiting predatory behavior. 

Predatory towing occurs when less-than-scrupulous towing companies use deceptive or coercive practices to take advantage of motorists in vulnerable situations. This includes patrolling parking lots regularly to tow cars within minutes of parking, which is a common way to get towed in College Station. It seems like no one in power cares about these predatory practices or the fact that they make college students’ lives even more difficult than they already are. 

College students are traditionally a financially broke group. While some are better off than others or have their parents’ financial support, that doesn’t mean they want to spend $300-$500 on a car tow fine — no one does. That’s money we could put toward rent, food, books or ourselves. 

College students are also traditionally a notoriously naive group. I don’t know about you, but I never ran into a tow truck until I came to College Station, and I most certainly wouldn’t know what to do if my car got towed. 

These companies feed on our naivety. Since many of us don’t know the rules regarding towing, we don’t know what’s legal, illegal or what we can fight; even if we try to fight, we’re more likely to fail because these older, more practiced sharks will intimidate us out of it. 

Why are these tow truck drivers such predators? It’s as if they forget that drivers are human too. Sometimes we have to park in a spot we’re not supposed to because we’re late for an exam, helping a friend in an emergency or quickly picking something up — we shouldn’t be fined hundreds of dollars for this. 

I can understand if someone is taking up a spot they shouldn’t for long periods of time, but really, I can’t park for five minutes to grab my Chipotle order? Nobody’s perfect, and I seriously don’t believe that leaving your car for such a short amount of time should cost you such an exorbitant fee.

If you think towing’s a problem in public areas, it’s even worse in college apartment complexes, especially ones in our town. Most complexes have an inadequate amount of parking for visitors, making it the perfect grounds for a tow truck to catch someone slipping. 

No matter what time I leave or return to my apartment, I can always find at least one tow truck circling the property. If you want to park in the visitor parking of where I live, you’re pretty much out of luck. Despite housing almost 4,000 students, there’s only about 50 visitor parking spots available, which is absolutely insufficient. 

There’s more than 50 people that are going to want to hang out with their friends, have their family visit or spend time with their partner every day. Some visitors spend as long as an hour circling the only visitor lot to try to find a spot, and even if they do manage to snag one, there’s still a chance they’ll be towed. Once the sun goes down, tow trucks visibly survey these visitor spots, shining lights on each car to see if someone’s there illegally. 

These towing practices definitely make visiting others a lot more complicated than it should be. There’s not many other forms of transportation available for students, especially late at night. You can’t expect someone to ride a bus over at 1 a.m., pay for an Uber or walk every time they need to go somewhere. 

Tow sharks suck, but they aren’t completely unbeatable. There’s a couple ways to either avoid a tow or pay less by knowing your rights. 

If you return to your car and it hasn’t been fully hooked-up, you can regain your car without paying a charge. However, if your car has been fully hooked-up but hasn’t left the parking lot, you must pay a drop fee to get it back, which is a charge offered by the tow operator that allows you to stop the tow without paying the full charge and additional storage charges. You have the right to regain your vehicle by paying the drop fee as long as the tow truck hasn’t entered a public street, road or highway. 

Predatory towing does more harm than good because depending on the driver, the reason for a tow can be very arbitrary — we shouldn’t have to scrounge up hundreds of dollars for this. Being a college student is already hard enough without these companies targeting us to milk us dry of the little money we have. I don’t have much hope that predatory towing practices are going to go away anytime soon, but hopefully with this information, you’ll at least have better luck against them. 

Abby Morris is an English and political science junior and opinion writer for The Battalion.