Fantastic Legislation – for a change
Section 165A Road Traffic Act 1988 with Regulation 5(3) Police (Retention & Disposal of Motor Vehicles) Regulations 2002 – be afraid, be very afraid….
…but only if you’re one of the scum-sucking lowlifes littering the roads of this country with uninsured illegal vehicles.
The goverment has come up with something good for all those interested in law-enforcement. I know it doesn’t happen very often, but they’ve actually come up with a useful peice of legislation.
Until now, if you stop a vehicle and the driver has no licence or insurance the most you could do is report them, advise them not to drive any further and then watch them drive past after you’ve parked round the corner. If you were lucky, they’d get summonsed, if you were even luckier, they turned up at court or pleaded guilty, and if your luck hadn’t been completely wrung dry, they got something more than 2 shillings out the poor box and Chinese burn off the magistrates.
Now things are slightly more weighted in our favour. Now you stop Joe Shite in his H-reg Ford Orion and he hasn’t got insurance and guess what mate, you’re walking home and there’s not jack-shit you can do about it.
Regulation 5(3) mentioned above gives us the power to sieze the vehicle on the spot. A police-appointed garage gets called out and takes Joe’s pride and joy into the sunset.
We’ve siezed over a hundred vehicles in the past two weeks and it’s great. The look on the faces of these uninsured or unlicenced (it works just as well if you haven’t got a driving licence!) wasters is priceless.
The best bit is they go through the rigmarole about being reported, summonsed, court, penalty as mentioned above, so you kind of expect them to get a crap penalty even if they end up paying the fine, but now who cares? ‘cos they have a built-in instant fine of £105 to get their car back, plus £12 a day storage and they have to produce a current insurance document for the vehicle before they can get it returned, otherwise the thing gets scrapped (or sold if it’s actually worth more than £105).
Instant justice – result!
Sometimes you just love this job….
