Following on from my rant in the non - pursuit thread and not wishing to hi jack it , what does the team think of the report in todays Telegraph which says number of abandoned cars on the streets has soared by 27% in a year.293,000 cars,an increase of 63,000 over previous year at a cost to the taxpayer (thats you and me folks) of £14.6 million thats £49.83 per car.
What I want to know is why the any abandoned cars cannot be removed more quickly ie before they become the usual scorched lumps of metal on melted asphalt surrounded by broken glass.
It must be worth the saving in costs of fire engine, police time etc to remove them straight away. They can do a removal PDQ if you park on a yellow.
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Where I live (Shortlands, between Beckenham and Bromley in Kent), there seems to be a special 'place' that cars get abandoned. It doesn't happen that often, but twice in the last 3 months a car has been abandoned in the same spot, bottom of a hill, near the station (first a mk 2 XR2, then a saab 9000). Both cars have sprouted a police aware sticker, and have been towed within 2 weeks. Of course, by then, various bits had mysteriously disappeared... although the cars haven't been burnt out (thank goodness)
I'm not unimpressed with how these have been dealt with, actually.
--
Dr Alex Mears
Seat Leon Cupra
If you are in a hole stop digging...unless
you are a miner.
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I think it depends on the local council in your area how quickly they act. I lived in Reigate for many years and our nice quiet residential area was a popular spot for the dumpers
The incident that reely got me annoyed was when in broad daylight one Saturday afternoon a stolen car came round the corner, lost control just missing neighbour and crashed into kerb, buckled wheels , attendant toerags run off clutching booze stolen from local off licence leaving car with lights and engine on , petrol leaking from tank.
Police informed and arrive , turn off lights shut doors and leave. Myself and neighbours foolishly expect further police or council action and we phoned repeatedly to them asking them to remove the car because of fire hazard. No joy .
Sunday morning 3 am - you've guessed it - awoken by loud explosion , car ( and neighbours hedge ) on fire and it took three hours of fire brigade time to sort it all out when it all could have been so easily avoided.
Most of the neighbours recognised the perpetrators from the local council estate but nobody prepared to stand up in court.
It just winds me up because it is so avoidable
Now where's my Valium ?
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what is definition of "dumped" car? only ask cos i remember case (locally)of a chap who left a taxed-insured but broken down cavalier mk2 unattended and untouched for 6weeks,on a council-owned (not pay-display)carpark.
arrived home from work one evening to find letter stating that "the abandoned vehicle..reg no xxx, had been traced to him via DVLA, and had been removed to the pound at xxx police station. he had 14 days to reclaim said vehicle, upon which a release fee would be payable.
having gone to said station and made enquiries, he found out release fee was £60,he was also responsible for the "removal"costs to get car home again. having done some quick mental arithmatic he came to conclusion that the car(with repair cost)was not worth it, and told plod that he wanted the tax disc back,and plod to dispose of it.
he was then told that he would be charged £60, for storage and disposal costs!
is this a case of plod *stealing for profit*?
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Billy
In the current EU regulated Great Britain if you want to dispose of a car these days £60 is what it would cost you for the scrap man to take it away even without police involvement, maybe a bit less if you can drive it to the scrapyard, This is why most old cars are dumped - to save this cost.
I just question why the car was left for 6 weeks without bothering to do anything about it. I don't think it matters if it was in a council car park or not. Lets face it if a car you did n't know parked in your spot outside your house and was left there for six weeks I think you and most people would probably come to the conclusion that it had been abandoned or stolen and inform the police.
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The obvious reason why the cars aren?t removed quickly is the cost. Nowadays the owners have to pay the Scrappy Man to tow their cars away and the said Scrappy Man usually has a number of completely unacceptable rules, like he won?t work after 6 o?clock or he?s not interested in coming over weekend. You would think someone could make a pretty buck out of what?s still left in your car but the truth is scrap and towing is now a hassle and pain to organise.
But I think system is also to blame. Imagine you have a son, you son used to drive a Fiesta until he visited his friend in Sidney and decided to take on a mission to see the world, join peace corp etc. After few months, with him being somewhere between Sidney, Tibet and Timbuktu the tax disk behind windscreen of his Fiesta expires. Now what? You would need his signature on V5 as proof of agreement to "sell" you the car, then MOT it, then get it insured to your name at awful cost and then go to Pat The Postman for the tax disk. What if you don?t have a driving license yourself? Technically it?s not illegal for you to own a car, is it, even if you don?t drive, but since the tax disc macabre, you can?t get insurance without license and can?t pay road tax without insurance. Catch 44. Ditto. What was supposed to be prevention against rogue drivers became pain in the backside to anyone but the rogue drivers. So, the only option would be a disposal of the car, which in many places can?t be arranged without extra money and time off work. Or just leave it there until someone complaints to council...
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IMO the whole thing is yet another example of the lack of joined up thinking in this state bureaucracy. They apply such stringent rules on scrap yards that it becomes uneconomic to take old cars for nothing, so yards have to charge. Obviously a proportion of people can't or won't pay the charges and just dump the cars for someone else to deal with.
It is all so utterly predictable.
Of course there should be stringent environmental controls on scrapyards, but it is ridiculous trying to make the last user pay all the costs of disposal. All the previous owners have benefitted from the car too, and most of them will have been better able to pay than the last one. There should be a final disposal levy (£60 ?) on the price of every new car, used to pay for scrapping it at the end of its life. Councils or dismantlers could then offer free disposal for old cars.
It's like the fridge fiasco all over again. It will be TVs and washing machines next.
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The point I was trying to get across in my original rant is that its usually but I agree not always pretty obvious when a car has been dumped and that when this happens invariably the cost is paid by the taxpayer so why can't action be taken sooner rather than later?
IMO delaying the collection is only likely to increase the cost
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A few months ago a broken down Escort, in nice condition, was left at the side of a local unclassified singleish track road. It was left neatly parked, half on the road and half on the grass verge with a note on the windscreen from the owner to the police explaining that it had broken down in the early hours and would be recovered before the end of the day.
I came back past just over an hour later and the windscreen and drivers side window had been smashed and it had been pushed sideways into a drainage ditch, this at 10am!
A neighbour called the police and the council removed the car before lunchtime.
I felt so sorry for the owner, the car was nothing fancy but looked well kept for its age and the wanton vandalism was hard to comprehend.
PP
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We see so much of this in our area , quiet country roads are littered with dumped or stolen cars - it goes with the dumped mattresses and builders rubbish , graffiti , litter and general apparent attitude of \'couldn\'t care less \' of those in authority in local councils and police who are intent on being PC and conforming to EU regulation sub sections and voting themselves more money than getting off their backsides and doing something about it. They want respect they\'ve got to earn it.
Sorry Mr Moderator - the man in the white coat is just coming with the nice sweeties......
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Apologies if this has been raised already, but it seemed an apt thread to put it into.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/somerset/3284641.stm
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I'm not casting aspersions on the owner of the Escort and I feel very sorry for him if the car had a valid tax that usually implies to me that it is not abandoned.
I'd like to know just how long it was left and how 'exhaustive' the attempts were to trace the owner. Was his registration document up to date?
I'm sorry if I seem cynical about this but remember you can't believe everything you read - some reporters don't like the facts to get in the way of a good story.
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this is exactly the point i was trying to get across in my post yesterday!!.
how long can you keep a "legal" vehicle parked-up unused in/on a public area?. I.M.O, it should be until either the r/tax,ins.,or mot expire. as long as it is parked appropiately, without causing hinderance or obstruction,it should be no-one elses concern.
of course public have a right to report "suspicious" looking vehicles, but this shouldn't give the police the *right* to lift them willy-nilly.
luckily, the car in the case i quoted was only an old one, and the owner wasn't too concerned at the outcome, but what next? it *may* be your new car that has been stood outside your house for a fortnight.(exaggerated point-for perspective purposes!)
billy.
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Up until a few years ago you could expect some small payment if you took an old car to the scrapyard,result very few abandoned cars.
If there was a payment,(subject to some sort of verification as to ownership)of say £50 per car,the cars abandoned at the side of the road would soon disappear without the need of councils employing staff and vehicles to do the job.
I suppose thats much too easy.
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I especially don't understand since if one of the desires is recycling, then having the thing in a scrapyard where it will be picked to bits seems ideal.
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The trouble is that recycling costs money, at least it does if done in an environmentally-friendly way. I fully appreciate the costs incurred by dismantlers in meeting the new stringent regulations. It is not simply a matter of stripping out the resaleable items and tipping the rest, as in the old days. I believe all the fluids have to be drained, all the plastic and foam removed, and all these materials stored safely and separately and then recycled by other specialised reprocessing firms. Allowing for the offsetting of costs by selling some of the mechanical parts, it seems that it costs £60 to collect and recycle a car.
No-one wants to pay that, least of all the government, so the antisocial or the poorest simply dump their old cars. Any council that showed it was a soft touch and stirred itself to move them quickly would simply become the dumped car capital of the UK.
As I said, a growing range of household goods will shortly have end-of-life recycling penalties, so expect to see ever-growing piles of rubbish in our laybyes and hedgerows.
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I especially don't understand since if one of the desires is recycling, then having the thing in a scrapyard where it will be picked to bits seems ideal.
I seem to remember reading recently that new rules on recycling (whereby all items have to be traceable back to their source) will make re-use of parts much harder. Re-using items is obviously much better than recycling them.
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Our taxes hard at work .... they won't learn - the market recycles better than regulation (unintended consequences etc)
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I agree - I've spent many happy hours clambering through the scrapyard looking for bits. The real skill is conning the scrap man that the item you are clutching which is £200 new and you need to get your dead motor sorted is only worth a few pence.
It all comes back to EU regulation and the nanny state - A regulation for everything which is never thought through - Clives post above sums it up.
Billy - Going back to the guy in Somerset -Three grands worth of tools on the back seat??? Sounds like a severe case of compensation setting in to me but of course I will not prejudge the outcome of the investigation.
It just goes to show what a difficult problem it has become for all parties.
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very true,"H"
somehow,i don't think i would have left the tools of my lively-hood under a couple of "old-coats" on the back seat!!
billy.
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Sorry I meant Cliffs post not Clive.
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Another two years and the problem should belong to the past.
Why?
Brussels have said so.
In October 2000 they passed the End of Life Vehicles Directive
(2000/53/EC) in which amongst other things States should arrange a free collection service. UK reported some difficulty in complying and as a result since October this year UK has only just started to implement parts of the Directive.
Read www.tinyurl.com/vtqw
DVD
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Im not a lawyer but my reading of the directive is this :-
Article 5.4 says that the producers should meet all or a significant part of the cost of end of life removal.
Article 12 .3 says that the member states may apply para 5.4 straight away.
What do the 'producers' Ford , Vauxhall et al have to say about taking on these costs or are they keeping very quiet.
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Bigger problem relatively for Rover unless BMW took on these liabilities for all those high-volume 80's and 90's vehicles.
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