A car lies abandoned and burnt out on the side of State Highway 2 near Tangoio. Photo / Paul Taylor
A car lies abandoned and burnt out on the side of State Highway 2 near Tangoio. Photo / Paul Taylor
OPINION:
For three weeks, two cars have sat parked on the grass verge toward the end of Riverslea Rd in Hastings.
The grass has been mowed around them.
I don’t know what happened to get them there, but clearly the property owners mowing the lawns don’t have the keysto move them.
I’m guessing they’re stolen and abandoned. And that’s becoming a common sight in the region. A dash of crime spree that ends with a spot of roadside littering.
So what happens to these cars that are left on the side of the road to become someone else’s problem?
The people who dumped them don’t care at all. Perhaps they had fun hooning around town in someone else’s car doing burnouts and laughing with their mates?
Meanwhile, someone wakes up in the morning and prepares for another day’s work so they can feed their family, pay their rent or mortgage and put petrol in their car, to find they have no way of getting to work.
Social media is full of posts from people asking for sightings of their stolen cars.
It made me think about what I would do if a car was abandoned outside my home.
I rang the director of a local towing company who said my first course of action would be to ring the police to see if it was stolen.
Linda Hall is assistant editor at Hawke's Bay Today. Photo / Warren Buckland.
If not, your local council is the next port of call.
The Hastings District Council website says it will respond to complaints about abandoned vehicles, illegally parked vehicles, and safety issues related to parked vehicles; for example vehicles parked over driveways or fire hydrants.
Regional Council plays a part when a vehicle is abandoned in a place where it could be an environmental hazard, like a stream.
The towie told me he’d seen a huge increase in stolen vehicles in the past 12 months in Hawke’s Bay.
He wants politicians and the courts to give some “power back to the police”, by allowing them to pursue vehicles of interest, and dish out reasonable punishments to those who flee.
“It’s so frustrating. My understanding is that there is a large group of 13 to 14-year-old youths doing the same thing over and over. They get a smack on the hand and go out and do it again. The other thing that might help is parents being held responsible.”
He also said that it was very taxing on them as a business. “It’s not nice to see the owners of these vehicles come into the yard to collect their cars that have been damaged and are covered in fingerprint dust. Then to add insult to injury they have to pay the towing fee.”
The towie said he’d been called out at 8am one morning to sit with a car that had been left running on the side of the road until a truck was available.
“It’s just getting worse and worse. We are getting phone calls all day.”
I think he’s right. Things have to change because at the moment we have a problem.
Joyriders are getting bolder, and younger. They’re teens with no driver’s licences, very little experience behind the wheel and once the car is stolen they have every incentive to put the foot down.
It’s a recipe for disaster. We need some action now.
* Linda Hall is assistant editor at Hawke’s Bay Today
