Can I get a rebate on a car being impounded?

Arg

No,are you for real?

Trebor16

Lum wrote: »

Did you actually read my post in it's entirety or stop at the quoted bit?

Immediately after the part you quoted I wrote "Maybe not so much in this case but there have been plenty of other examples...".

The reason I state that it's wide open to abuse is it provides a legal mechanism by which an unscrupulous police officer could cause an innocent person to suffer a financial penalty without any judicial process being involved.

So just how would they do that in a breath test scenario?

Lum wrote:

Not technically a fine no, but it's a fee that you have to pay despite having committed no offence, just because the police screwed up. It's not your fault that the police chose to remove you from your car and thus needed to have it moved. If they're going to charge you for what is basically an operational cost they may as well charge you petrol money for the cost of taking you back to the station, or charge you board and lodging if you end up locked up for the night before the mistake is discovered.

How have the police screwed up here? They required the OP to take a breath test and he failed. They use a calibrated device so how did they screw up? Of course its the OP's fault that he was removed from the car, he failed a breath test!!!

What a load of nonsense!

sarahg1969

OP, you're not going to get your car back without paying, so you'll need to do that first. But, there is nothing to lose by trying to recover your money. Pepipoo is the place for help.

Lum

Trebor16 wrote: »

So just how would they do that in a breath test scenario?

I wasn't talking about a breath test scenario, I even conceded this in my initial post. I was expressing a more general disdain for this bit of law.

The classic example is the MIB database. The SLA for that database is that 95% of cars will be on it within a week of the policy being taken out. As long as the insurer manages that then they have met their obligations. However the police regularly seize cars for the crime of not being on this database. In some cases they have accused people carrying their paperwork of carrying forgeries. So the car gets seized, driver has to get further proof from their insurance company and ensure that their insurance company actually updates the bloody database.

They are left without a car for several days, have to pay the recovery fee and the daily storage fee and at no point have they committed any offence, however simply not being on the database is apparently grounds for reasonable suspicion and a seizure.

Bonus points that the police sometimes use an offline copy of the database and it can be up to a week out of date.

As far as I'm concerned, using this database in this way is where the police are screwing up. I remember well someone from the MIB on Radio 4 stating that the database was only ever designed to prove that somebody IS insured, not that they are NOT insured, though the MIB website is now less clear on this.

Given that the full version of the database contains a lot more details such as which insurer, expiry dates etc. etc. how it would be easy for an unscrupulous copper to target an individual or group that they dislike and cause them to fall foul of this?

Trebor16

Lum wrote: »

I wasn't talking about a breath test scenario, I even conceded this in my initial post. I was expressing a more general disdain for this bit of law.

So why not stick to the topic at hand instead of going off at a tangent.

Lum

Because the the original question has been well and truly answered and if the OP wants anything more useful they will need to go to pepipoo, which has also already been suggested.

It's not exactly a massive derail either.