Wreck and abandoned cars

[style]

Originally Posted by AnOldBlackMarble

I'm surprised to see so many abandoned cars in Italy, even on the streets. Aren't they piked up by the city? Here in the US there is a law that if a car is not moved from the same spot for more than three days, the city comes and takes it away, even if it is brand new. A little extreme, I would prefer it was more like two weeks and with a warning, but there's no warning here. They write up a ticket and tow it away at the same time. It happened to a friend of mine and cost him over 300 dollars to get it back.

Here in Italy around half of our laws (thousands and thousands) are not enforced by police and, of course, not followed by people. The picture above is one example.
Remove an abandoned car here in Milan is very difficult and it takes usually 6+ months. Moreover we can't tow heavy vehicles like SUV away because our city council doesn't have tow truck for these vehicles.
But Milan is one of the few cities of the First World that have widespread illegal parking: in early every street you can find cars parked illegally (especially on sidewalks) because police tolerate it. Indeed when police fined people for illegal parking, they often appeal against fine to the judge court and, sometimes, they wins, thanks our hyper burocracy.
In your country and in others when someone is get fined, he always pay the fine. Here just sometimes, and none (politicians for examples) cares about it.

Ps: the case of the picture above is worse than usual because it is parked in pay zone (blue stripes)

[italystf]

In Italy vehicles are regarded as abandoned not if they stay in the same place for long but:
-if they have no licence plate;
-if they have no insurance windshield sticker or if it's expired;
-if they are very damaged, have flat tyres or lack essential parts to move.
This happens for vehicles parked on pubblic spaces.

[italystf]

Some vehicles abandoned in Trieste:

Fiat 127 Special (1975-1981) (insurance expired in 2011, public street)


Fiat Tipo (1988-1995) (insurance expired in 2007, university parking lot)


Autocaravan Ford (insurance expired in 2010, pubblic street)


Fiat Panda 4x4 Sisley (1987 -2003) (private propertry)


Some scooters:

[Satyricon84]

Citroen CX 25 TRD Turbo 2

[MajKeR_]

Originally Posted by italystf

Piaggio NRG MC3... To be honest, I'd like to put it, buy some documents and have pleasure of using it. Very decent scooter and good ones still cost 3000 PLN or over (its ~700 EUR).

Rest is not as nice - first is Aprilia Scarabeo 125/150, third seems to be Kymco Movie XL (also 125 or 150), next - I don't know (old Honda Pantheon/Foresight?), and last is Kymco Agility (quite common even in Poland).

[italystf]

Originally Posted by MajKeR_

Piaggio NRG MC3... To be honest, I'd like to put it, buy some documents and have pleasure of using it. Very decent scooter and good ones still cost 3000 PLN or over (its ~700 EUR).

Rest is not as nice - first is Aprilia Scarabeo 125/150, third seems to be Kymco Movie XL (also 125 or 150), next - I don't know (old Honda Pantheon/Foresight?), and last is Kymco Agility (quite common even in Poland).

Maybe it was abandoned because it had serious problems not worthing repairing. Throw away the plate and abandon it is cheaper to demolish it officially. Or maybe they were stolen. All abandoned scooters you can see plus the Fiat Tipo lay for years within university campus parking lots. In the first pic there are 3 abandoned scooters at the same point.

[MajKeR_]

Believe me, everything is worth repairing here...

I was wondering if carrying broken scooters from Italy is simple. You have huge amount of scooters (in comparison with another European countries, excluding France and Spain) and I've seen a few places where cranky ones are stored, but establishing contact with owners of those places may be hard without knowledge of Italian language. And are there some official, maybe police depots, where you may buy something with documents?

[NorthWesternGuy]

A Mini, dunno the year, near my sister's school

[italystf]

Originally Posted by MajKeR_

Believe me, everything is worth repairing here...

I was wondering if carrying broken scooters from Italy is simple. You have huge amount of scooters (in comparison with another European countries, excluding France and Spain) and I've seen a few places where cranky ones are stored, but establishing contact with owners of those places may be hard without knowledge of Italian language. And are there some official, maybe police depots, where you may buy something with documents?

You can buy used vehicles in Italy contracting legally with the owner, bring them to your country with a trailer and register them there. The owner has to do an official "passage of propertry" also when he sell his vehicle within Italy. With abandoned vehicles on public areas with unknown owner the situation is different. They technically belong to police forces that have the right of investigate, find the owner and force it to remove it. Parking a vehicle with no plate or insurance expired in a public street is illegal in every case.
Nobody throws away his money, if one wants to get rid of his old but working car or scooter, he will sell it. Abandoned vehicles have usually serious damages that make economically unprofitable any reparation (vehicles with many kms are sold for only a small fraction of their original value, anyway). Or they are related to criminal gangs who steal vehicles to go around and later abandon them. Sometimes they are disassembled and parts are sold on the black market to mechanics or used to make illegal modifies in other vehicles.

[NordikNerd]

Originally Posted by italystf

With abandoned vehicles on public areas with unknown owner the situation is different. They technically belong to police forces that have the right of investigate, find the owner and force it to remove it. Parking a vehicle with no plate or insurance expired in a public street is illegal in every case.

I have some plans of driving to Germany, Holland and maybe Italy. (think it's going to be a trip by train this year though)

I have a Citroen with 220.000km on the meter, so it has a high risk of breakdown. Especially at a long drive with 6 people & full load of luggage in the hot summertime.

Let's say the timing belt brakes. I would not spend 2500 EUR fixing the engine, as the car is not worth more than that amount.

I have a couple of choises.

1. Get the car towed away to a scrapyard. (expensive) I have no insurance for towing. But it's possible to scrap my car in any EU-country. There is a special form for that. Allthough the local scrapper wouldn't know that, he probably doesn't like forregin documents and extra burocracy either. Is he forced to take it ?

2. Sell the vehicle on the spot. Takes time, which I don't have while on vacation.


3. Abandon the vehicle. I have read in various forums about that. Some people wrote: Just unscrew the licenseplates and report the car stolen. Take the train/flight home. But the chassinumber could be traced and the police would contact you when your at home. You could also give your car to a "goalkeeper" that is a homeless person who takes over loans and bancrupt companies. He does all kinds of shady businiess for money.


I read in a danish paper about an old Mazda 626, finnish registered car, abandoned in Copenhagen with 1000 EUR of parking tickets on it. I don't think the owner missed that car.

So what would the police do to the vehicle? They take it away, demand a fine, time goes by noone is heard from. Will the fine increase? If the owner is living in a forregin country can they sue him and bring him to court ?

[MajKeR_]

italystf - carrying motos from private contacts in Italy is already popular in Poland. Here is the proof - I've just marked home country as Italy. I have also two good friends with scooters brought from Italy - '97 Yamaha BW's 50 and '05 Malaguti F12 Phantom 50. But I was wondering about those broken ones, which often have no value in Italy, but after repairing may be source of pleasure for someone in Poland.

How you can define scooter as not worth repairing? When engine have no compression or with some bigger faults? I'm asking, because maybe it comes from costs of Italian services and people's incompetence in servicing. My other friend, who has '02 Peugeot Looxor 100 from France, once hadn't the compression in engine and in service he heard that repairing costs 1200 PLN (300 EUR), so very much - but he bought needful parts and repaired it in his garage, what costed 300 PLN (~80 EUR).

If I can repair almost everything by myself, I think that all those abandoned Italian scooters are wasted. And about source of cranky ones - in Poland there are tradesmen, who have contacts with insurance companies in France and carry motos (often with documents) from there for very low money. Is something likely possible in Italy, do you know?

[Satyricon84]

Originally Posted by NordikNerd

3. Abandon the vehicle. I have read in various forums about that. Some people wrote: Just unscrew the licenseplates and report the car stolen. Take the train/flight home. But the chassinumber could be traced and the police would contact you when your at home. You could also give your car to a "goalkeeper" that is a homeless person who takes over loans and bancrupt companies. He does all kinds of shady businiess for money.


I read in a danish paper about an old Mazda 626, finnish registered car, abandoned in Copenhagen with 1000 EUR of parking tickets on it. I don't think the owner missed that car.

So what would the police do to the vehicle? They take it away, demand a fine, time goes by noone is heard from. Will the fine increase? If the owner is living in a forregin country can they sue him and bring him to court ?

Often here police doesn't get neither one cent from the fines got by people with foreign license plates... even if they would find you are the owner by chassisnumber (and nobody said that they will search it) could pass years before somebody would call you to say "hey, your car is here". If you go to the airport in Bergamo for example, you'll see some cars that are abandoned (I posted a Fiat Uno with irish plates some weeks ago), then there are at least two with british plates and some with italian. And they are there since years.... so if I were you, if the car break down I would destroy the license plates, report the car stolen and go back by plane. Once you are at home won't be anymore your problem

[NordikNerd]

Originally Posted by Satyricon84

,. so if I were you, if the car break down I would destroy the license plates, report the car stolen and go back by plane. Once you are at home won't be anymore your problem

The only remaining problem would be to get rid of beeing the registered owner.

I must send in the registeration documents and mark that I'm not the owner anymore. There is no square for "stolen vehicle" though.

Also if reporting the vehicle stolen will a telephone call do? or must I meet the police. If they start asking questions about the theft, I presume you have to come up with a good story.

If you go to Turkey or Russia with car, this idea is not negotiable. When you enter the country you get a stamp in your passport that you bring your vehicle, so you must absolutely take it out of the country when leaving.
Does not matter if it's scrap or reported stolen.

So think twice if you're going there especially having their way of (wreckless) driving in mind.

[italystf]

What happens if you really have your car stolen or destroyed in an accident in Russia or Turkey?

And what happens if the police finds your car reported to be stolen with no damaged lock (in your country or in another Schengen country)?

About fines abroad: in the 80s my father went to London with his car. He collected 3 parking tickets (he parked outside the hotel in what he though was a reserved space for guests). He asked a cop how to pay them and he said that nobody could charge him abroad so he threw away them

[licenseplateman]

This VW Vento has been abandoned in Växjö for several months now.

[Chilio]

German towns and cities (especially student ones like Heidelberg) are full of abandoned bicycles, sometimes quite annoyingly being obstacles on narrow streets with even narrower sidewalks... And moreover they are locked to infrastructure such as street lamps or traffic signs. And bicycles don't have registration regime, so it's impossible to find out the owner. So sometimes abandoned bicycles can be even greater problem than abandoned cars.

[kato2k8]

Umm, those aren't abandoned. If they are locked to something they're generally used by someone. And if they aren't the chance that they were stolen and later ditched by the thief is near 100%. Quite common actually.

[Chilio]

Too rusty, dusty and with flat tyres, obviously not used for several months, since they have been locked at this position. Why do you think one cannot abandon something locked? Are all these cars on the pictures in the thread left unlocked? Of course not.

[licenseplateman]

Abandoned cars spotted today

In Tingsryd

Volvo 142



In Väckelsång

Volvo S40, Rover 400, Volvo 850, Volvo 740 and Fiat 126. Sorry for crappy picture.



I also took a closer picture of the Fiat 126



In Ingelstad

Volvo 740

[MajKeR_]

Originally Posted by licenseplateman

I also took a closer picture of the Fiat 126

126p!

Brought somebody to the promised land and that's how he's grateful for it...