In the United States, if there’s a car parked where it shouldn’t be parked, such as in your driveway, you can have it towed.

Apparently, that’s not the case in the UK.

In today’s story, someone abandons their car at a hotel, and it’s in a very inconvenient place; however, nobody is willing to tow it.

Thankfully, the hotel manager eventually finds someone who can help.

Let’s see how the story unfolds…

Driveway or the highway

I’ve already posted about my ex boss and how she outwitted the council planning division, but this isn’t her only exploit with cutting through red tape in her own way.

On this other occasion, she did have help.

So, to give some background, I work in a hotel and have been here for a number of years through a change of management.

My ex boss, before the change, was something of a force of nature and a woman to be reckoned with.

I shall call her by the title we all knew her as, Miss D, which was the initial of her surname.

A celebrity used to stay at the hotel on a regular basis.

At one point, whilst Miss D was running the hotel, we had a regular guest who, whilst not being an A-lister, was something of TV celebrity here in the UK.

For anonymity, I won’t say who she was.

Celebrity used to come to the hotel with her younger boyfriend, about who we didn’t know that much.

At one point, I came to work, to see a car parked up in the hotel drive.

It was on the driveway leading up to the hotel and not in the actual car park.

We just reckoned this was lazy parking by one of the guests and assumed that it would move once the guest either went out for the day, or after they checked out.

It seemed like someone abandoned a car.

Several days later, after all the guests who had been in the hotel that day had checked out, the car was still there.

It soon became obvious this car didn’t belong to a guest at all, but had just been dumped, half blocking the driveway leading up to the hotel.

We checked the car out to find it had been left unlocked though without the keys.

We decided to give it a bit more time and see if the owner would return to pick it up.

It’s not as easy to get a car towed in the UK as it is in the US.

Time passed and no sign of the owner and the car was still there, in the driveway, requiring our guests to manoeuvre round it when driving up to the hotel.

This was when Miss D decided it was time to take some action.

I know, from reading other Reddit posts, that in the US, if a car is parked on someone’s land without their permission, the landowner can just contact the right people and get it towed, however here in the UK things are different.

Miss D contacted the council to report the car and they replied that as it’s on private land it’s out of their jurisdiction.

She then contacted the police, local transport authorities, basically anyone she thought would be in a position to help.

Each time the response was the same.

They only had the jurisdiction to deal with cars and vehicles abandoned on public highways and had no power to interfere with any vehicle on private land.

Added to that, we were told that under no circumstances were we allowed to move it as we would be tampering with someone else’s property.

Miss D mentioned the car situation to the celebrity.

It was around this time that Celebrity came along for one of her regular visits to the hotel.

Her and Miss D got on pretty well, mainly as Miss D would give her preferential treatment due to the kudos of having a celebrity staying at the hotel.

As Miss D and celebrity were chatting, the subject of the abandoned car came up and Miss D told her how none of the authorities would do anything about the car as it wasn’t on a public highway.

The celebrity’s boyfriend took care of the car situation.

Like I say, celebrity always came with her younger boyfriend and, like I say we didn’t really know that much about him but this was when we discovered a certain skill set he had.

That night, he wandered down the drive, opened the car, broke the steering lock and hotwired the engine, managing to get the car started.

This done he promptly drove off, returning a while later on foot.

He never told us exactly where he took the car, and we never asked but suffice to say, wherever he took it, it was somewhere well and truly in the jurisdiction of all the traffic related authorities.

They would have had no choice but to deal with it themselves and, as directed, we didn’t interfere with the car ourselves at all.

It’s really nice that the celebrity’s boyfriend was willing and able to help the hotel like that.

It’s too bad that it sounds super difficult to get a car towed in the UK.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This reader thinks the law is “messed up.”

Another reader wonders what you’re supposed to do in a situation like this.

This reader claims that UK law states they have to remove the vehicle.

Another reader offers suggestions about what to do to prevent this situation from happening again.

Another person expected the story to end differently.

I wonder why someone would abandon a car at a hotel.

But at least it got taken care of.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.