Owners abandon seized vehicles

By CHRIS DANIELS

Hundreds of people who have lost their cars after driving while disqualified are not bothering to reclaim them.

Police are seizing record numbers of vehicles following the introduction of laws in May requiring them to seize and impound for 28 days vehicles driven by disqualified, suspended and forbidden drivers.

The vehicle owner must pay a towing fee of between $47 and $60, depending on the time of day the car is towed, and $12 for each day it is in storage.

Police and MPs have applauded the new law as a great success, with a 27 per cent drop in the number of disqualified drivers being caught by police.

From May to December, police stopped 6647 disqualified drivers, compared with 8999 in the same period the year before.

But tow companies who have the contracts for towing and storage are finding that many owners are not bothering to pick up the vehicles up when storage and tow fees are more than the value of the cars.

Companies say between 30 and 70 per cent of cars are not being claimed.

Fred Courtney, owner of Broadway Motor Services in Whangarei, said only about 30 per cent of impounded cars were picked up, "if we're lucky." Most were deregistered and without warrants.

"Most of them are just appalling rubbish and people just don't come back for them."

Don Chalmers, in charge of impounding and storing cars for Onehunga Towing in Auckland, said he had sold between 100 and 150 vehicles since the system began in March.

His company was at present storing 230 cars and usually picked up about five each day.

More than 70 had been impounded in Auckland City so far this month. Mr Chalmers said around 70 per cent of all these cars were eventually picked up by their owners.

The cars he eventually sold were mostly deregistered then sold off to wreckers.

Mark Williamson, manager of Action Towing, which tows and stores half the vehicles seized on the North Shore, said only about half were recovered by their owners.

It was rare for the company to make any money selling the cars that had not been picked up, as most were in a very poor condition.

Many were also repossessed by finance companies.

Action Towing got less money when the vehicles were repossessed, as the finance companies could claim them before the 28 days' impoundment period was over.

Mr Williamson said he would continue doing the impounding work for another six months then reassess whether it was still worth doing, as it was becoming less and less economic.

The manager of Hamilton and Waikato Towing and Salvage, Dion Ward-Allen, said he sometimes negotiated a fee with owners of cars worth far less than the towing and storage fee, which often added up to about $400.

"Otherwise we just end up with heaps of junk lying around."

However, he had no problem refusing to negotiate if he thought a car was too unsafe to be on the road.