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I'm a law breaker

mountainexplorer

mountainexplorer

1/2 ton status
Joined
Nov 14, 2001
Posts
4,904
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Location
Spokane, Wa./Ione, Wa
What should you expect when you take the first vehicle you ever got pulled over in 5 years ago, and tow it with another vehicle that you more recently got pulled over in.

You get pulled over.
3671Towbar74Jimmy1.JPG


Circumstances have made me become the owner of this '74 GMC Jimmy for the 3rd time. Kind of a repo thing this time. Expired tabs. But I figure its no major offense to tow a vehicle the 100 straight miles home on I-90 without forking over another $20 sunk into the vehicle for a permit.

So I pull out to go home... tow bar connections tight, safety chain on, etc... oops, I forgot to turn on the flashers on the Jimmy. I figure I'll just do that when I get to the gas station down the road 3/4 of a mile.

I guess I shouldn't even think of sneaking past the law, cause withing 0.5 miles of leaving with the Jimmy in tow, the seemingly only cop on duty in Moses Lake, Wa. just happened to be in traffic behind me.

Vehicle in tow not licensed. No lights on. Then, I realize my registration which I physically put in the '84 K5 two weeks ago isn't with me for some reason, and just like last time I got pulled over for no mudflaps, my latest insurance card JUST expired. Oh, and where is my front license plate? I wish I knew the answer to that one too.

So, he gives me a warning and says don't move it unless its on a trailer or I have a filled out permit and working tow lights. I just played dumb, and I guess it made me look like less of a criminal.

Remind me to keep doing things proper like I should for next time.
 
Vehicle in tow not licensed. No lights on.
Click to expand...

This is one of my hot issues these days. Make sure you have the lights on and most definately at night and make sure they can be seen more than 10 feet away like the flow of asshats we have through here every night.

This is the reason why I'm kind of pissy about this.

About three weeks ago, right around midnight, my partner got a 911 call in his area. Since I'm the only other one out that night, I have to head that way to back him up.

I'm only about 45 miles away. We run Code 3 to these calls. I'm on two lane blacktop and like every other time out in the middle of nowhere, I bury the go pedal somewhere down around Peking. Weather is clear, roads are dry.

We have a lot of south of the border citizens traveling through here at all hours towing cars back to Mexico that they bought somewhere north of here.

I'm running well above 120 mph when I run up on one of these rigs. I don't see the lights on what he is towing until I'm at about 100 feet from the rear. To make matters worse, the lights are not on the rear of the towed vehicle, but they are at the top front of the cab, so there's about another 6 feet of vehicle that I can't see until it's too late. I bury the brake pedal, ass end of the car flies into the air while the front dives down. When you hear tires chirping on an ABS-equipped vehicle on dry pavement, you know your sh*t is weak. I have three options. Take the car off into the ditch, plow into the towed vehicle, which is doing all of 50 mph, a good 15 mph slower than the speed limit or wait until the car coming head-on clears and hope I'm slowed down enough that I clear the crap in front of me. I took the third option. Even with the brake pedal buried, I was still 20-25 mph faster than these clowns with the inadequate lighting. I watched the video from my in-car later and the camera doesn't even pick up these lights until the front end of the car dives.

To give you an idea why that sucked; every other vehicle out there, even when I'm running that fast, I can see far enough away that all I have to do is let off the gas and lightly touch the brakes before I get up to it.

If you are going to tow, make sure you do it legally and safely............ :D
 
It was mid-day, and I still shouldn't have even pulled out without having the 4-ways on the Jimmy. It was one of those things as I pull onto the main road... "Crap, I forgot to turn the flashers on" (even though I went inside the Jimmy to turn them on before pulling out, but I somehow sidetracked myself with making sure the T-case was in neutral.

I should have pulled over right away and turned them on, but it was one of those things... its light out, I'm easily seen, and its just as well to keep movement to the gas station turnoff than to pull over now.

The cop was very by-the-book (as should be), but was nice enough to not give me any tickets. I didn't want to tell him that I've towed easily over 100 vehicles with this tow bar by-the-book, cause he probably wouldn't have been as forgiving had he known I knew better.

I was mostly upset at myself for not having the emergency flashers turned on, not having my registration (which for some reason turned up on the desk here at home :confused: ), and for somehow forgetting to put my front plate back on when I swapped front bumpers 2 years ago. I'm sure I lost it by now.


You ever get one of those gut feelings like maybe you shouldn't be doing this... not necessarily from a legal standpoint, but from an instinct. I feel that everything happens for a reason and this saved myself and or others from possible injury from something going wrong on the way home. (I also noticed the front right caliper on the Jimmy was pulling). So, I accepted my $60 in wasted fuel on this trip with a smile.
 
not to hi-jack but does anyone else find it odd that ice tea plays a cop on tv when he had a song(term used veery loosely) about killing cops.
 
Need a permit to tow a vehicle????
dayum
I just towed my bro's ford ranger with our jimmy... nice tow bar and had hazzards on... did this in the snow.... no rig in tow paper or anything...

shees and people pick on NJ!!! :D
 
its worse here..

Here in MA you must have the towed vehicle registered and insured if the wheels are on the ground(2 wheels,or all 4,doesnt matter!)--unless you have all 4 wheels off the ground,like on a trailer or ramp truck,it has to have active plates and insurance,or you get busted!--
With a tow bar or dolly you cant tow a vehicle unregistered or uninsured,and VERY few people get off with a warning--with all the budget cuts around here,the police are glad to issue tickets ,to even the guys towing junkers to the scrapyard near me--they sit on the sides of the road,even the "back way" to the scrapyard and nail them for being overweight or improperly secured loads...I dont have a problem with that,I have been behind more than one of those scrap haulers and bumpers and bolts,nuts,and other peices of metal were falling off the truck,lucky I didnt run them over of get a cracked windsheild!...:mad:

My brother used a tow bar to haul a 1967 ford econoline pickup home from NC,he only got questioned twice at truck stops by state troopers--lucky for him it had NC 30 day tags on it with 5 days left on the registration,and they said its suppossed to be insured too,but didnt press th issue...:blush:

I no longer try to save money by sneaking a truck or car home by attaching plates or using a tow bar or dolly--its cheaper in the long run to call a ramp truck,I have a few friends that have one and will do it cheaply--and its much safer too--none of my trucks are exactly in pristine towing condition..:crazy:
 
Usually everything I tow with the tow bar is licensed. Maybe not insured... don't know if a towed vehicle in Wa. has to be, but I don't think so. I'll admit, Ive snuck a few rigs home with the tow bar unlicensed, but we're talking about a matter of blocks or a couple miles here. Had I been only going another 2 blocks to my destination, he'd probably have just said go. But beings that this time I still had 100 miles, he couldnt let me proceed.

I've found it so much easier to just use my trailer nowadays. But I sold the motor out of my Crew cab, and didn't have the trailer here at the house in town, so I figured the tow bar would be simplest.

Oh well, I have a friend going through the area today with a trailer, and I told him I'd give him $20 to grab it for me, cause I'd have spent that on a trip permit anyway.
 
Here's a story that will make the cops hair stand on end. My boss (and father-in-law) used to have an old '68 jeep J20 pickup truck. We would use it sometimes to haul bags of cement, lumber, whatever. Anyway my wife and I were using this truck in town when I lost brakes at a stoplight. I flew through the stoplight and managed to stop in someones yard. It turns out the jeep had the original master cylinder and when my rear brake line blew I lost all brakes. I called the boos on the phone and told him what happened. He said he'd be there in 20 mins with the tow bar. I told my wife and asked her "I don't remember us having a tow bar, do you?"

So 20 mins later he shows up with a 10' piece of pipe and a chain. He runs the cain through the pipe and attaches 1 end to my bumper and the other to his hitch. He then proceeds to tow me 15 miles on the interstae this way while I steered the tow vehicle. He was too cheap to pay the $50 for a real tow.:rolleyes:
 
gravdigr said:
he shows up with a 10' piece of pipe and a chain. He runs the cain through the pipe and attaches 1 end to my bumper and the other to his hitch.
Click to expand...

Seen that done before. I got the hell off that road as soon as I could... looked like an accident just waiting to happen.
 
There's a couple guys in my club that flat tow their toyotas all over creation and never have any issues. One is insured and street legal but the other...good god. 90% of the time it doesnt have a hood it never has doors it is currently riding on 3 38's and 1 36 and he drags it behind a landrover... I flat towed a 91 chevy dually with a bigass utility bed on it about 300 miles behind my mom's 2500HD. Title for the truck said it weighed 6200 pounds and I didnt have any issues at all. I had magnetic lights on it, but the lights had a 4 prong plug and the truck was only equiped with a 7 prong plug, and I had no adapter. So I just stuck the lights on for the visual effect and drove home. All but the last 20 minutes were in daylight and I drove through three towns that are known driving nightmares with no legal trouble at all.
 
BBR can probably correct me, but I think it'a actually illegal in this FINE state to drive with the 4-way flashers on. Never made sense to me.....
 
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