Friday 12th November 2004

Police tow car from hard shoulder

PHer's car is forcibly uplifted -- at his own expense.

---

Don't break down on the motorway if you value your wallet. That appears to be the lesson to be learnt from the experience of one PHer who broke down and called his breakdown service.

PHer cccscotland was on the M6 when his Mitsubishi's clutch failed. After calling the Mitsubishi breakdown service from the hard shoulder, a traffic police officer gave him half an hour to remove the vehicle or the police breakdown service would do it for him. Mitsubishi didn't turn up in time -- the police officer called it 'a race' -- and our PHer plus car were taken to the police depot where a swap was arranged between the two breakdown flatbeds. He was left with a bill of £105 for a service he didn't ask for and didn't want.

The police argument was that road safety was paramount and involved getting the car off the hard shoulder as quickly as possible. In his own words, cccscotland then:

"Phoned GMP [Greater Manchester Police] Authority, AA and RAC helpdesks, Lothian and Borders Police Traffic Div, and Derbyshire Police traffic div, plus my father, who lives in Manchester. None of them had ever heard of this. Wrote a nasty letter to GMP demanding my money back."

Though the matter has yet to be resolved, one suggestion is that the police has outsourced its breakdown service to a managing agent which employs a large recovery organisation, whose signature is its yellow vans, to do the job. As a result, there's  a price to be paid for each uplift that the police arranges.

Among other, two key issues stand out:

• Is it right that the police should pass on the cost of enforced uplift in this way?
• Should the police breakdown service be outsourced anyway -- and if so, how and to whom?

Join the forum discussion here: www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?p=1&f=10&t=136225&h=0

[ian d]

ah, i see, "a breakdown tax".

if the owner has no access to a recovery organisation, ie AA or RAC etc then they could reasonably be charged to have the vehicle removed from the road but IF you have membership of a breakdown service this incident amounts to a "breakdown tax" in the same way that camera revenue is a "speed tax".

sad. very sad.