Not On The Scrap Heap
Environmental and safety concerns are mounting at the growing number of cars being dumped on the highways and byways of the UK. Falling used car prices and the fact that the price of scrap metal has slumped from £40 to £2 a tonne mean that motorists are just dumping worthless vehicles where they break down. High fuel prices are making motorists with unwanted cars at home unwilling to drive to a scrap yard and tougher MOT standards mean that failures that are too expensive to repair are just abandoned. An RAC Foundation survey among UK councils has uncovered significant problems. Birmingham appears to be the dump capital of the UK, with more than 10,000 cars abandoned in the city over the last year, this represents a fourfold increase in three years. Scotland is suffering as well, Glasgow's figures have risen to 2000 a year and in one 3 week period in July 169 dumped vehicles were reported. Both cities have introduced schemes to speed up the removal process. In Birmingham, where £200,000 a year goes on moving abandoned cars, a new information sharing process with West-Midlands police ensures that vehicle ownership is verified quickly allowing removal of nuisance vehicles within 24 hours. Vehicles dumped in residential areas and on busy commuter routes often cause congestion and inconvenience as other cars are forced to squeeze by. In Thetford, Norfolk, contractors resurfacing a road had to tarmac around an abandoned Daihatsu left for weeks in a 20-minute bay. Many rivers like the Clyde are so full of scrap cars that hazards to boating have to be regularly cleared. The RAC are keen to see a solution to the problem, but falling used car prices and the rising cost of running a car means that the amount of dumped cars on the streets looks set to rise. The only obvious solution short of a change in the car market seems to be more council resources devoted to cleaning up the abandoned vehicles after they are dumped.
About the Author
Greg Coles is a motoring journalist offering consumer advice for anybody thinking
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