This is a scene, unfortunately, all too common. Cars, sometimes old and dilapidated, but sometimes even exotic and sporty, that lie abandoned for months and years, in an airport parking lot, a shopping center, or on public roads. Every year around 50,000 vehicles are abandoned on public roads and around 6,000 in workshops, warehouses and public car parks.
The General Directorate of Traffic recognizes that this is a problem and a detriment that often affects those responsible for private spaces. According to DGT estimates, there could currently be 20,000 abandoned vehicles in shopping centers, urbanizations, communities of owners and private garages, and hotel car parks.
And that is why The DGT has prepared a more agile mechanism to requisition and destroy 20,000 abandoned cars.
File image of an abandoned Saab dealership in France.The DGT will destroy 20,000 abandoned cars
The DGT has issued the instruction VEH 2022/26 which provides for a more agile procedure to manage the destruction and decontamination of vehicles that have been abandoned, on public roads, and in private spaces.
The instruction establishes that, based on the cases in which it is considered that a vehicle has been abandoned, the competent Administration is in charge of transferring the vehicle to an authorized vehicle treatment centerto a scrapyard, to proceed with its subsequent destruction and decontamination.
The owner of the vehicle that has been considered abandoned will be warnedbefore proceeding with the transfer, that if within a month you have not removed it from the place where it was parked will be transferred to a vehicle treatment center and will be destroyed. If the vehicle in question is found to be in acceptable condition or, as the DGT expresses it, “for ordinary use”, the authority could substitute the destruction of the vehicle for a requisition, in which the car would be awarded to the security surveillance services. traffic after the authorization of the Provincial Chief of Traffic.
In other words, those cars that have been abandoned and are in good condition could end up in the hands of Traffic agents, for surveillance work.
What is an abandoned car for the DGT?
The General Directorate of Traffic will consider that a car has been abandoned based on the assumptions established in article 106 of the Law on Traffic Circulation of Motor Vehicles and Road Safety (Royal Legislative Decree 6/2015), on the residual treatment of the vehicle.
The assumptions to transfer a vehicle to an Authorized Vehicle Treatment Center, for its destruction and decontamination, or to requisition it for traffic surveillance services, are the following:
- When more than two months have elapsed since the vehicle was immobilized or removed from the public highway and deposited by the Administration and its owner had not made allegations
- When it remains parked for a period of more than one month in the same place and presents damage that makes it impossible to move by its own means or the registration plates are missing
- When a vehicle has been picked up as a result of a breakdown or accident in a private area, its owner has not removed it within two months