Vehicle Impound Options

[Draco18s]

Just as an aside: given that all cars in ShadowRun are electric, wouldn't it be prudent to drain the batteries to help guard against possible theft? If the impound needs to move a car, they can juice it up first.

(I was thinking along the lines of modern cars: pop the battery out. If a car needs to be moved, drop a battery in, move it, pop it back out. When someone reclaims their car, the impound employee gets the battery that got taken out, drops it in, drives the car up to the gate, and hands it over to the owner)

[Saint Hallow]

Just strap in an inhibitor to keep the battery from running. Or just unplug a wire, & the car won't run.

[CanRay]

Some chummers they are not going to help a fellow out to get his favorite bike back.

Well, they're Shadowrunners, not Go-Gangers. That'd be much different.

A 1%er who had his bike "Stolen" by the po-po? The rest of the gang wouldn't stand for that!

Just strap in an inhibitor to keep the battery from running. Or just unplug a wire, & the car won't run.

Unless it's Multifuel, Distributor Cap. Easiest thing to remove that kills a car. Popping the cable off of it will give you a few moments, removing it completely? Gotta find a replacement. Works for any automobile that still uses petrol or petrochem or whatever they're calling it. The electric motor of hybrids will still work, but I doubt that diagnostics will allow the car to move without the other engine working.

[Saint Hallow]

That's why I think there's a mechanic or some smart drone at the lot who performs some sort of mechanical/electrical operation that makes the vehicle unable to be driven off remotely or completely. Disable the wifi (aka Signal), remove the distributor cap, or dismantles the ignition wires. Who knows how many cars in 207X still use some sort of ignition system?

[Irion]

So the basic questions:
1)Open air or Warehouse?
I guess it depends on what this acutally costs to maintain and to build.
If it is dirt cheap to build a 3 level parking garage the amount of space saved will probably be enough reason to do it. (And it takes much less time to get the cars in and out, around half)
If you have that, it is probably not that big of a problem to cover the walls in wifi inhibiting paint.
2) How is security?
Really depends on what kind of cars you have stored there. And if there is an awakend version of the marten.(This will make a hall of some sort verly likly and the entrance will be covered with a ward...)
But I guess drones will be enough and a spider to monitor if everything is alright. (Not just security but also paperwork ...)
Maybe one or two guys for customers relations and if drones do not work. So to fix a car or just push it outside.

One interesting point made was, that they are great targets to steal a lot of cars in a short time. This I would translate in a hefty security response, if stealing is spotted. Just to prevent the fact, that people start robbing it blind every freaking week.

[3278]

Just as an aside: given that all cars in ShadowRun are electric, wouldn't it be prudent to drain the batteries to help guard against possible theft? If the impound needs to move a car, they can juice it up first.

Here's the thing with crime: you have to weigh the value of the possible loss against the expense of protecting it. Now, an impound lot is a funny place: there's lots of expensive stuff there, but most lots aren't liable for what gets stolen, and insurance covers it if they are, so they don't have a huge reason to invest heavily in security. So a system like this, that would cost money on discharges and recharges [which aren't 100 percent efficient] and which would delay processing vehicles [charging presumably taking a non-zero length of time in Shadowrun], isn't really ideal for an impound lot. Something like a fence - which will stop casual criminals, but doesn't have a large or ongoing cost - is heavily favored, while guards, animals [which are liabilities], and electronics are typically eschewed.

There's not a lot you can do about determined criminals. You probably lock your house doors, but it'd take me five or ten seconds to break into your front door. If you've got a deadbolt and I don't want to spend a couple minutes with it, I can just go in through a window. You can bar the windows, but I'm just going to go in through the well, then, or come up to you with a pistol and demand your keys. The determined criminal will bring a hot pack to power the electric car at least a couple blocks, and then all that discharging and recharging is for nothing.

(I was thinking along the lines of modern cars: pop the battery out. If a car needs to be moved, drop a battery in, move it, pop it back out. When someone reclaims their car, the impound employee gets the battery that got taken out, drops it in, drives the car up to the gate, and hands it over to the owner)

You typically can't do this at an impound lot, because the employees don't have ready access to the battery [my car notwithstanding], because they don't typically have the keys. So they're not driving the car anywhere; it gets towed from place to place. And again, a hot pack will prevent this tactic from stopping the determined criminal, anyway. [That and the fact that you don't necessarily need a battery to start or run a car, of course.]

I'm not saying your idea wouldn't work - particularly if, in Shadowrun, tow companies are given free reign to access your property - just that the considerations for preventing crime economically would likely make them more trouble than they're worth, which is why you don't see crews of security guards at impound lots, and why people don't just pour foot-thick concrete walls to keep me out of their houses. [Which, no, also wouldn't stop me.]

[3278]

Unless it's Multifuel, Distributor Cap. Easiest thing to remove that kills a car. Popping the cable off of it will give you a few moments, removing it completely? Gotta find a replacement. Works for any automobile that still uses petrol or petrochem or whatever they're calling it.

What is this, 1995? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Most cars haven't had distributors for a while now.

[CanRay]

What is this, 1995? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Most cars haven't had distributors for a while now.

Well, the last time I worked on a car, that was the year it was from.

Other than that, I worked on a motor that was from the early-1970s.

[Draco18s]

You typically can't do this at an impound lot, because the employees don't have ready access to the battery [my car notwithstanding], because they don't typically have the keys. So they're not driving the car anywhere; it gets towed from place to place. And again, a hot pack will prevent this tactic from stopping the determined criminal, anyway. [That and the fact that you don't necessarily need a battery to start or run a car, of course.]

I'm not saying your idea wouldn't work - particularly if, in Shadowrun, tow companies are given free reign to access your property - just that the considerations for preventing crime economically would likely make them more trouble than they're worth, which is why you don't see crews of security guards at impound lots, and why people don't just pour foot-thick concrete walls to keep me out of their houses. [Which, no, also wouldn't stop me.]

Oh sure, IRL it's not the best of plans, but I was thinking more "I know how modern cars work" and the "flavor of ShadowRun" where it's highly likely that if Lone Star impounds your car, they're probably going to resell it (they are, afterall, a for-profit business), so they do have an interest in keeping their lots theft-free.

In any case, popping out the battery isn't terribly high-cost, but it would be rather effective at keeping an electric vehicle from moving (a gas vehicle would only need a jumper/hot pack, of course).

[nezumi]

My car was impounded by the police after an accident. I imagine they had to keep it clear for insurance investigations, but nothing criminal. A vehicle impounded as part of a sextuple homicide probably will get better protection than my broken-down oldsmobile did.

The location was out of the way. Real grungy part of town, at the end of a one-lane alley, snuggled between the railroad tracks and some old warehouses or something. There was light woods on three sides. The lot itself was protected by an eight-foot chain-link fence and concierta wire. They did their business in a double-wide. I didn't see any cameras, but I suspect they had a dog. The whole place was real run down. A chunky, ugly lady behind the desk was rude at me, until a chunky, ugly tow truck driver could take me out to my car about twenty minutes later. They had to move two other cars for me to get access to it. The driver came out with me. I couldn't take pictures of it without paying off my fines. I couldn't take anything out without paying off my fines. Fines were something like $80 a day for storage, plus $300 for towing. They did not tell me this when they took the car. They did not bother informing me that my car could be reclaimed even after the second and third day I left it 'in police custody'. Terrible people, and I love stealing all of their cars in my Shadowrun games. However, on the good side, the most security they had was that the cars were all boxed in, and a heavy-gauge chain on the fence.

[3278]

That's exactly it. Push that into Shadowrun, and that's what you're looking at. These are not polite middle-class operations where a guy in overalls takes a set of keys and goes and gets your car from a well-lit lot out back; it's not a car dealership in suburbia. This is an urban impound lot. If you haven't been in one, or lived in the neighborhoods they're in, Nezumi's description is spot-on.

[Daddy's Litt...]

That is what I was thinking, with the emphisis on the rude people. The Philadelphia impound people are imfamous for being rude. They are petty little people who weild what power they can over the people who come to them.

[CanRay]

That is what I was thinking, with the emphisis on the rude people. The Philadelphia impound people are imfamous for being rude. They are petty little people who weild what power they can over the people who come to them.

Bureaucrats. They're almost all like that. Some groups worse than others.

[nezumi]

In my area they're not bureaucrats. They pay city hall a fee to handle car impounds. Then they charge whatever they want for you to get the car back. $300 for a tow + $80 a day in storage is pretty standard (compare to first class airport parking, which is $20 a day). No refunds. No negotiations. A few months ago some cops were busted for actually arranging for legally parked cars to be towed, and getting a payoff from the towing company. It's a huge rip-off scam. Some day I'm going to load a dead car with lead paint, dead batteries, pesticides, and leaking oil, leave it to get towed, and let the towing company deal with the clean-up costs, JUST BECAUSE.

[Yerameyahu]

Ah, the joys of the 'free' market. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

But in SR, the 'impound lot' for the vehicles of violent shadowrunners might well rate a more tightly-controlled situation? After all, the cops already *are* the free market subcontractors, and we're not talking about parking violations.

[nezumi]

Again, why is the vehicle being locked down? Vehicles that are paid for with illegal money are oftentimes auctioned by the police department, so will be much better kept. Vehicles seized as evidence in a crime are also likely to be better kept (depending on the importance of that trial). Police impound is a different creature than civilian impound. However, vehicles being held for a traffic violation can't be auctioned off until they reach a few thousand in fines.

(I don't know what happens to a legally-owned vehicle when the owner is convicted of a crime and sent to prison, though.)

Another interesting story I heard about here in DeeCee. A woman was injured and put into a coma, and put into the hospital. Meanwhile, her car was ticketed every day, towed, then ticketed again for not being picked up. The city sold her lexus for $4,000, in order to cover $8,000 in traffic tickets.

A little off-tangent, I know, but I feel it adds a nice cyberpunk touch.

[Saint Hallow]

While everything mentioned is well & good, don't forget it's 207X. On-board computers can auto-pay fines, auto-drive/pilot themselves to new spots in case the current parking space is now unavailable. The amount of impound lots that handle vehicles for minor traffic/parking offenses have to be small & not many. Only time I see a vehicle getting impounded by anyone is that it was used in a major crime (and therefore seized as evidence), & needs to be processed/tested by CSI like people for clues. Those lots are restricted, guarded, & will be problematic for average people (& a few runners maybe) to get in.

[3278]

While everything mentioned is well & good, don't forget it's 207X. On-board computers can auto-pay fines, auto-drive/pilot themselves to new spots in case the current parking space is now unavailable. The amount of impound lots that handle vehicles for minor traffic/parking offenses have to be small & not many.

This is an excellent point. There's a tendency, when projecting an existing thing forward, to take what we have, and hang the window-dressing of the future on it, and call it science fiction. Shadowrun does a lot of this. That said, there will still be, for the foreseeable future, a lot of cars in Seattle that don't have Pilots, or that don't have wireless control, or whose wireless or Pilot systems are damaged, or which were parked in dead zones, that private wrecker services will still need to come and physically remove a car that's been parked illegally,* and put it somewhere else until the owner can come get it. So while I think the demand might be lessened, as long as there are older cars on the road, it'll still exist.

*Not just parked illegally, but parked in such a way and in such a place that the vehicle must be moved, not just like you ran out the meter or whatever.

[Paul]

That's actually happening more frequently now a days. Forgot to make a few car payments? the good people at GMAC simply disable your car remotely until it's paid up.

[nezumi]

This also assumes you have a parking meter and a fine system which is willing to interact with the car. While my city is happy to make it easier for me to pay for things (now accepting all major credit cards) they do NOT make it easier to avoid future fines.

[CanRay]

This also assumes you have a parking meter and a fine system which is willing to interact with the car. While my city is happy to make it easier for me to pay for things (now accepting all major credit cards) they do NOT make it easier to avoid future fines.

Mine got that tech as well, and allows payment by cell phone as well.

Too bad none of the meters tell the right time, and fail as soon as it hits -40C with the wind chill. Seeing as this is Winnipeg, that's about 2/3rds of a typical winter. Seems some idiots in city hall believed the company when they told them that "Wind chill doesn't affect machines."

[Draco18s]

This also assumes you have a parking meter and a fine system which is willing to interact with the car. While my city is happy to make it easier for me to pay for things (now accepting all major credit cards) they do NOT make it easier to avoid future fines.

That said, I've heard of parking meters with a "free" button on it. As long as there's no time on the meter you can punch it and get a free 15 minutes.