Woman Gets Towed After She Fell Asleep In Her Car

They say there’s no such thing as a free ride—unless you’re asleep inside your car during a tow. 

TikTok’s most recent original experience was shared in a viral video posted on March 22 by KayemDee (@kayemdee81). In it, a bewildered tow truck driver was confronted by a woman who claimed to be asleep in her vehicle as he towed it to an impound lot.

“You towed the car with me sleeping in it,” the woman told the driver as he rolled down the window. “Where the hell am I?”

The driver said he entered her car and took a video before towing it. “You weren’t—where were you?” he asked her in the video, which has been viewed 5.3 million times since it was first posted. 

“I was in the back of the seat. I was in the back,” the woman insisted. “I just woke up. No lie, you just towed me here.”

“Baby I don’t think [the driver’s] doubting you, I just think he’s SHOCKED that you didn’t wake upppppp,” one viewer jokingly observed. 

“I’m just imagining her waking up halfway there and just not being able to do anything till he stopped,” another wrote. 

Despite the woman’s ordeal, viewers applauded how calm and polite she appeared, while others shared memories of falling asleep on the school bus and waking up hours later in an unknown garage.

“My mom freaked out when it happened,” @chefboy_rd88 recalled. “The school tried saying I never got on the bus, she called the cops and everything, but I sure did get on the bus. To this day, best nap ever.” 

“I was a missing child for a few hours,” @yousernameeeeeeeeu said of their own similar experience. “The 90s were a hell of a time.” 

@kayemdee81 #towlife #freeride ♬ original sound – KayemDee

In a now-archived thread from 2021, Redditors demanded to know what exactly happens in situations like these.

“Has anyone ever gotten towed away WHILE THEY’RE IN THEIR VEHICLE?? I.e. while sleeping at night?” the thread’s original post reads.

While unknowingly being towed inside one’s vehicle didn’t seem to be a common occurrence, users on the thread debated whether or not someone in that situation could file a lawsuit. 

“Towing a vehicle with somebody in it would be all sorts of illegal,” u/lennyflank speculated. “They always make sure there’s nobody (or nothing hazardous) inside. They are entirely capable of entering the vehicle and searching it.”

According to Car and Driver, towing laws vary by state. The site does not indicate whether it is “illegal” for companies to tow cars with people inside them, but it does note that 18 states require towers to release vehicles to their owners if they return to their cars before they have been removed from the property, perhaps for a smaller “drop fee.” It also notes that only four states require towers to photograph cars before taking them.

It is unclear where KayemDee is located and whether they recorded the interior of the woman’s car to comply with local law or company policy. The Daily Dot reached out to KayemDee via TikTok comment for more information.

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*First Published: Mar 26, 2024, 2:00 pm CDT

Maya Wray

Maya Wray is a Fall 2022 FOIA intern for the Daily Dot. She is currently a senior at the University of Texas at Austin, where she studies journalism in the Moody College Honors Program. She has written for the Daily Texan and the Austin Chronicle.

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