Clamping on private property

Our man in Havana

Is clamping on private roads and land legal? Is there any limits on release fees? Can you legaly release the clamp yourself without causing damage?

Nuttzz

It is
There isnt (AFAIK)
You can, just remove the clamp, put it in your boot and they can never prove you were there (unless they take a picture)

leeroybrown

Afaik:

Clamping on private property is legal so long as the clamper has the permission of the owner (and sufficient notice/signage is provided telling people not to park there).

I don't think there is a limit but I presume that advertising the release fee is a legal requirement.

If you release the clamp yourself (without doing damage) then you've pretty much gotten away with it. The only recourse they have is legal action if they can prove that you were there.

Our man in Havana

Is it possible to release the clamp yourself? If you lift the wheel off the ground will the clamp come off?

leeroybrown

I'm no expert on wheel clamps but I think most of them lock tightly around the wheel meaning that removal will generally require removing the wheel from the car and the afaik clamps are designed to restrict access to the wheel nuts. At an absolute minimum you'd probably have to fully deflate the tyre.

Nuttzz

http://eserver.org/cyber/das_boot.txt


The boot is designed to intimidate, our experts say;
its toughest parts are the ones that would be the most
obvious targets for boot-busting vandals-- the lock
mechanism, for example. With a special tamper-resistant
padlock surrounded by a box made of quarter inch carbon
steel plates, the lock will stand up to just about
anything short of a low-yield nuclear device. So our
bootbusters ignored the lock and looked for other,
less-obvious places where the boot could be attacked.
It took them no time to discover several major weak
points in the boot's protective armor.

Deflating the tire. If the boot is going to work
properly, it must be properly installed, and that's not
an easy process--especially in the dark, when you have
a long night of boot-installing ahead. if the
installation is even a bit sloppy (that is, if the jaws
that attach the boot to the wheel are a little bit
loose), it's often possible to remove the boot by
letting the air out of the tire and simply sliding the
whole thing off.

This is by far the simplest strategy. It doesn't always
work-- conscientious installers can prevent it almost
every time, and some car wheels don't leave enough room
for the process anyway. But veterans of boot-happy
cities have told us they've removed dozens of boots
this way, quickly, quietly and easily.

The hubcap plate. A key element to the boot's
effectiveness is its ability to prevent car-owners from
getting access to the lug nuts on the booted wheel. One
the lug nuts are accessible, the wheel can be removed
and replaced with a spare tire, and the car can be
driven away.

If the boot is properly installed, the plate will be
tightly secured over the hubcaps, making it impossible
even to imagine loosening the lug nuts. But the plate
is one of the more flimsy parts of the boot; it's
attached by a half -inch swivel pin that is spot-welded
to the frame. As our boot-busting experts explained,
spot welds that hold together two pieces of metal of
different thicknesses are inherently weak. There are
several such welds on the boot, and this one is
especially vulnerable.

With a common battery-powered drill and a 15-cent
grinding wheel or "cut-off tool" (see photos), one of
our experts was able to grind away most of the weld on
the pin in about two minutes. With a five-dollar cold
chisel and a standard hammer, he did the same job even
faster.

Once the weld is broken, a quick blow with a hammer
forced the pin out, releasing the plate from the boot
frame and making it easy to change the tire and rive
away, leaving the old, boot-laden tire behind (or
safely stowed in the trunk as a souvenir).

The jaw-to-frame pins. The main frame of the boot--the
"arm"--fits into a pair of metal pins on the
wheel-clamp, or "jaw" (see main story, illustrations).
The pins are a central element of the boot's structure.
They're also one of its weakest links.

The pins are only about an inch long. When the boot is
installed, they appear to be connected to each other
through some sort of thick, central rod. In fact,
they're just stuck into holes drilled in the frame, and
spot-welded at the bottom.

Even when the boot is assembled, there's plenty of free
play between the arm and the pins. A few strong, sharp
blows with a hammer on the top of the pins quickly
breaks them free and makes them easy to remove. With
those pins gone, the boot comes apart immediately.

The welds holding the lock-box to the frame. For all
the effort that the boot-makers put into developing an
impregnable locking mechanism, it's amazing how loosely
the lock-box is attached to the rest of the boot. Four
flimsy spot-welds hold the entire
padlock-and-coverplate assembly to the main boot frame.
It took and expert just a few seconds to chip away one
of the welds with a chisel and hammer; when one of our
spastic, incompetent, weak-wristed editors tried it on
a second weld a few days later, it took less than a
minute.

Once the lock-box is liberated from the frame, the
entire boot can be dismantled and removed quickly with
a ratchet and standard (16-inch) spark-plug socket.

The arm itself. If all else fails, our experts
discovered they could actually cut through the
tough-looking steel of the main arm with a
battery-powered drill and a cut-off tool. Forget the
oxyacetylene torches and the nitric acid--the boot arm
cuts like butter with a cheap hobbyist's tool. By our
calculations, a standard drill-and-cut-off tool set-up
can cut through the main arm in less than ten minutes

Victor

Technically, it could be construed as a trespass against the car and strictly speaking, you can't hold another's goods without their permission. However, invariably, it is the vehicle that is clamped that has committed the first trespass, so I can't imagine a court striking out a clamp release fee.

Can you imagine leaving your car in a multi-storey car park after it closes? Do you expect the court to look at you favourably as you vandalise the lock on the roller shutter. Legally there is little difference between the clamp and the roller shutter.