SafeSpeed wrote:
Last night they had Hampshire's traffic cops crowing for 30 minutes about 'section 165' vehicle seizure powers. (Must look that up).
http://www.dorset.police.uk/news/displa ... 1140517058alternatively, a swift Google.co.uk for "section 165 vehicle" produces the SI and other stuff from OPSI etc.
From the Dorset plod page quoted above:
Quote:
Sergeant Jim Beashel from Dorset Police’s Road Policing Unit based at Ferndown, said: “Section 165 of the Road Traffic Act means that if police officers suspect that a vehicle has been driven without a driving licence or insurance - and the driver fails to provide the necessary evidence at the roadside - then the driver will be required to hand the keys over to the officers and the vehicle will be seized and taken to a storage facility.
“If the driver disputes the existence of insurance, or their driving licence, contact will be made with their insurance company from the roadside to resolve the matter.
“If the driver is not the registered keeper the police will send a notice to the registered keeper to inform them that their vehicle has been seized, however, it is important to stress that we will only seize vehicles belonging to those drivers who do not hold a licence or valid insurance for the vehicle.
“The driver then has 14 days in which to arrange for the correct documents to be taken to a police station.
Sergeant Beashel continued: “If we are satisfied that the documents provided by the driver at the police station are in order, then a form - given to the driver by the police officer when the vehicle was seized - will be stamped. The driver is then permitted to pick up the vehicle once any recovery and storage costs are settled.
“The driver is required to pay £12 per day for every day the vehicle is left in storage. In addition, the driver will be required to pay a recovery cost of £105.
Hold on a minute - by their own admission over 70% of DVLA records contain at least one error. The police suspect that the driver is uninsured, has no license, etc. and seize the vehicle. After running around for a few days which can involve loss of earnings and other consequential damages, the driver proves the police's assumption wrong
and still has to pay for storage and recovery 
IMO, this won't happen very often but when it does the police should be obliged to apologise and compensate the innocent victim that they have wrongfully penalised.
Hopefully someone will be brave enough to challenge this under ECHR or the Bill of Rights (having looked at the SI, I can't see an explicit setting aside of the protection from penalty without trial).
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The burger van hatch has flown open and embeddd itself in the cargo cab of the delivery truck tearing it completely off the burger van in the process; the burger van is parked a dozen or so yards up the road behind the delivery truck.
