Get the tow package

Methinks you have an overdue date with your bed. It's OK, happens to all of us now and again

 

If people watch where they are walking, they won't catch a knee or shin on the hitch while on the sidewalk. It's called paying attention. If you are dumb enough to not watch where you are walking you deserve to get shin checked.

 

THANK YOU!

 

In urban settings where they're squeezing into parking spaces meant for Civics and Fiats? Yup.
In apartment complexes where the biggest reasonable fit is a minivan or small truck and my neighbors combat-park their F250s with an additional 8 inches of steel sticking out over the sidewalk? Yes. If your bumper impedes the sidewalk by a few inches, no biggie. If your bumper + tow hitch means people have to get off the sidewalk and go through the grass, you're being an asshole. It doesn't matter if they're paying attention or not, it matters that you're obstructing the designated pedestrian / bicycle pathway.

In normal suburban driving / parking? Eh, it's a wash. I don't consider a trailer hitch a "defensive measure" like some people are saying, but it's not hurting anything in the burbs or rural settings.

In urban / city settings, yeah, IMHO it's a dick-move to leave it in all the time.

 

next someone is gonna try and convince me hillary and obama are good for our country.

 

OP get your frame checked. This happened to me in a tacoma for work. Got rear-ended at a red light. no visible damage. hitch receiver actually bent the frame.

 

Where in a city on a public road would you ever be backed in against a public sidewalk?

 

He was stopped behind me and hit the gas from a few feet away, was not hard enough for me to worry about my frame bending

 

http://www.b4ubuild.com/peeves/peeve_005.shtml

Standard sidewalks have a minimum width of 42". An 8" impediment leaves you with 34" of walkable space. If you are running into a hitch you deserve it. That's like saying, the city shouldn't put parking meters on the sidewalk because I might walk into them. Time to start thinning the herd!

 

Here in CA, those kinds of spots are everywhere. Especially in the downtown area of cities and near the beach

 

#firstworldproblems : being stuck in a democracy where the majority of the population doesn't understand the needs of the country as well as you do.

 

here u would get towed !

 

How convenient. Upselling the hitchless 2016 are we ??

I call troll, and raise a post.

 

Also, it most urban areas you have parallel parking only or a parking garage. I'm a bit confused as to which city has the type of parking spaces which are perpendicular. In a parallel parking situation I prefer to leave my hitch in. It prevents cars from squeezing in so tight you can barely pull out of the spot.

 

Gotcha - don't overestimate the robustness of these frame though.

 

Parking Garages. I'm in the DC/NoVA area, they're nearly all full of parallel (non-angled, organized in rows, not street-parking) spaces. I always park WELL in the back for this very reason. Last time I had to spend the weekend in DC, I came back to the train station parking lot in northern VA and found an F350 dually (with hitch) on one side, and a silverado 2500 (with hitch) on the other. They also parked in the back, because they knew they had larger than average vehicles for that sort of parking. I wish I had counted the number of turns, but I'll just round up and call it a 100-point turn to get out of that parking space with my Taco. Without the hitches, it may have been a 20 or 30 point turn instead, the extra clearance makes a huge difference in tight quarters.

As for sidewalks... We're not talking about "bumper even with curb", we're talking about "back wheels butted against curb". Like this (admittedly the first GIS result) : http://www.carsandracingstuff.com/library/articles/14095.jpg

And he's not even tires-to-curb like I've seen most asshats around here do regularly. Even so, that's half the sidewalk blocked.

 

Have not parked next to a sidewalk or parallel in at least 25 years

 

That's cute.

You drive a Tacoma not a dump truck.

The frames are engineered to absorb impacts, they have crush point on them, not mention lack of strength in general

 

FYI for those using everything interchangeably, the "receiver" is the part mounted to your truck that "receives" the ball mount or "stinger". The receiver may also be considered the "hitch". The "hitch can also refer to the whole receiver/ball mount assembly. The ball mount/stinger is neither a tongue nor typically referred to as a hitch on its own.
The "tongue" is the part of your trailer that sticks out and mounts to the ball mount.

 

This is the temp step we keep on our SUV and the truck when hitch is not in use. Grease the inside of the hitch and mount. I use a bolt so it's tougher to steal but it works well. They will bend and absorb light impacts and they are reasonable cheap and don't grab "shins" as they are easier to see.