The owners of Roadside Towing & Recovery in Durham surely must be aware of the fact they’re not going to win a popularity contest with a woman injured in a recent wreck, who has casts on both ankles and black eyes from a wreck in which she blew a tire and crashed into trees on the Durham Freeway median in Research Triangle Park.

But company officials believe they should win a dispute over whether they mistreated Shannon McCabe in the handling of her wrecked truck.

Basically, McCabe says the Highway Patrol trooper who assisted her called Roadside to come and get her car and once they had it, the trouble started. A fellow at the company, she says, told her the truck was probably worth less than the cost of fixing it, which would come out of her pocket since her insurance didn’t cover it.

His deal, McCabe says, was that the company would keep her truck and forget the $300 bill. She said that he told her, “If you just bring us the title, we’ll let you get all your stuff out of it.”

It sounds like the Highway Patrol, which has say-so as to which companies are on the towing list, should give this a very close look. If someone with the company tried to make a deal on the truck and said McCabe could get her belongings if she brought the title, that was plain wrong. The company disputes some of McCabe’s version. But that is one of the issues the Patrol will have to sort out.

Many people in nearby cities, Raleigh and Chapel Hill for example, have had disputes over towing fees and practices. There have been too many problems in too many places to conclude that complaints about this issue are always unwarranted.