Wheel clamp

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Denver boot as used by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation

Style of wheel clamp used in The United Kingdom

A wheel clamp (American English: Denver boot, or boot) is a device that is designed to stop vehicles from moving. In its most common form, it consists of a clamp which surrounds a vehicle wheel and is designed to prevent removal of both itself and the wheel. It is often used for security purposes, such as preventing a trailer or caravan from being towed away by a thief, or to stop one's own car from being driven away by a thief.

It is also used to crack down on unauthorized or illegal parking, in lieu of towing the offending vehicle. In these cases, police or property owners who place the clamp may charge a high "release fee" to remove it. In the United States, such a device became known as a "Denver boot" after the city of Denver, Colorado, was the first in the country to employ them, mostly to force the payment of outstanding parking tickets.

The Denver boot was invented and patented in 1953 by Frank Marugg, a musician for the Denver Symphony Orchestra. As a good friend of the Sheriff, he was asked to build a device to immobilize automobiles whose owners didn't pay their parking tickets. For decades, Denverites have simply called the device the "boot" and use the term as a verb ("to boot" a car).

Wheel-clamping is notoriously unpopular in the same way that traffic wardens are. However, whereas a traffic warden or police officer only has jurisdiction over public roads, wheel clampers can prey on vehicles parked on private property.

One British man became so annoyed at having his car clamped, that he removed the clamp with an angle grinder. He is now a self-styled superhero called Angle-Grinder Man, offering to remove clamps for free with his angle grinder.^{[citation needed]}

In Scotland, wheel-clamping on private land is illegal. It was banned by the case of Black v Carmichael 1992 SCCR 709, when wheel-clamping was found to constitute extortion and theft. However, in the boot's native city, Denver, many private parking lots now use the device to immobilize vehicles when payment or other misuse is evident.

In the animated film Cars, Denver boots are used in a fashion similar to handcuffs, leaving the booted vehicle to hobble along instead of driving normally.