As a tow truck driver myself, rotations don't work in all areas. In areas where there's only a few companies and very little traffic, then sure a rotation system would work.
It works in many major municipalities with just as much traffic as Toronto, too. Don't make it sound like the places where rotations only work in hick towns with one stoplight.
But in areas where you have 30+ companies, no one is going to be able to make a living.
Perhaps it's that the area can't support 30+ companies. There used to be a couple dozen here, and they have bought each other out to the point where there are a manageable few.
Also when you're sitting stopped dead on the 401, 404, 403, 427, DVP, QEW etc... trying to get to work, but can't because the police have to sit and block the highway and wait for a rotation truck to show up, you'll change your opinion mighty quick.
Not at all. Design the system so that trucks are parked on the major arteries in strategic locations during the high-traffic times such as rush hour(s), and have them move in quickly and deal with a situation, being replaced in its staging position by another truck (or returning itself if the situation does not require a tow). That is a proven, working system in many municipalities already. As well, it's the basis for how car races can be resumed mere minutes after a 12-car crash - the responders (including tow trucks) swoop in from their staging location and remove the problem vehicles, while someone else pulls up into their staging location. When the "in-use" truck is clear, it moves to the empty staging location (generally quite close to where they finished being "in-use"), and then things are back to speed.
The problem that needs to be regulated isn't the chasing itself, its the billing for the services. Chasing in high volume traffic areas allows the flow of traffic to resume quickly and gets the police, fire and EMS workers out of harms way quickly.
"Chase" around me at 160 km/h with your lights flashing and driving up the shoulders and over medians and you'll find out whether or not you're doing responders a service.
There's been plenty of evidence on this very forum that tow truck drivers in Ontario (
not all of them, but definitely more than zero) get radios programmed onto public safety radio systems when they are expressly not permitted to do so, specifically for the purpose of jumping on calls. Even if you believe that getting tow trucks dispatched at an early point is important - even if you believe that police want tow trucks to self-dispatch so that the scene is cleared up quicker - there is absolutely no excuse for putting radios on a radio system without authorization. Scanners are legal, and that should be enough - police would surely "look the other way" to tow truck drivers using scanners for personal/financial gain, seeing as how they already do so for the media.
When you put a bandit radio on a trunk system, you risk the safety of the users of the trunk system. In one case I'm familiar with, two radios were programmed with the same radio ID. The legitimate radio stopped communicating with the trunk system when the bandit radio was powered on (and thus affiliated to the system). Imagine that the legitimate radio was in the hands of a firefighter trapped in a burning building, or a cop or medic on the street being threatened by someone with a weapon. When the tow truck driver turns on his eBay radio so he can catch wind of calls before he's asked to go, so he can drive well above the speed limit and risk others' lives, he cuts off communication for the FF/cop/medic just as they were about to transmit a mayday. Still OK for the tow truck driver to use whatever tools are at his avail to jump calls?
If police and authorities deem that having tow trucks self-dispatch to calls in order to deliver better service, fine. The moment a truck goes 81 in an 80 zone, drives the wrong way down a road, etc., the driver should be prosecuted, and the company he works for should be banned from police/authority use for 30 days. Increase that to 180 days for a second offense and a permanent ban after that.
If Ottawa region (or whereever the original story was from) wants to prevent tow trucks from using scanners to jump calls, there's already a law on the books for that - part of the Radiocommunications Act or its enabling legislation. They don't need to (and shouldn't) invent a new law to ban scanners from use, regardless of by whom.
