- Police no longer need to issue a warning before seizing certain vehicles.
- The new power applies to antisocial vehicle use on and off-road.
- Officials say illegal off-roading is increasingly damaging protected areas.
Getting your vehicle seized by police is a quick way to ruin your day. When that happens miles from civilization it’s even worse, because now there’s an all new problem: how the heck are you getting home? That’s not just a general quandary either. It’s a question police in the UK are putting to those who off-road in spaces where it’s illegal.
Authorities in North Wales say that unauthorized off-roading and other “anti-social” vehicle use is increasingly damaging protected countryside. Thanks to a change in UK law over the summer, police can officially seize offending vehicles immediately rather than giving owners a warning first. “It’s a long walk home,” PC Eryl Lloyd of North Wales Police’s rural crime team told the BBC. Officers already have one great example of why this law is key.
Read: Cops Seize $5 Million Ferrari Monza Among 90 Cars In Massive London Crackdown
Last year, a convoy of seven 4x4s traveled from Liverpool to the Berwyn Site of Special Scientific Interest in Wales. According to Natural Resources Wales, the group broke a gate lock with bolt cutters, tore down signs prohibiting private vehicles and drove more than 3 km (1.9 miles) across privately owned land toward Moel Fferna. Unfortunately for them, they also documented some of the adventure on TikTok.
Authorities say the videos showed the vehicles plowing through protected peat and blanket bog habitat, leaving deep tracks behind. If that wasn’t evidence enough, two 4x4s became stuck and had to be pulled free by other members of the convoy, causing still more damage. NRW eventually traced vehicles to their registered keepers, while the social media posts helped place defendants and their vehicles at the scene.
Three men were ultimately convicted. John Robinson and Michael Williams were each ordered to pay roughly £2,000 ($2,700 at current exchange rates) and lost their driving privileges for two months. Joseph Hodgson was later ordered to pay more than £2,000 and received a three-year Criminal Behaviour Order banning him from the entire 254-square-kilometer (98-square-mile) Berwyn protected area.
North Wales Police and NRW say that despite the example set last year, reports of illegal off-roading have been increasing. Lloyd points not only to 4x4s and motorcycles but also e-bikes. Ultimately, Britain’s newest deterrent is remarkably simple: Ignore the signs, tear up the countryside and there’s a chance the vehicle that brought you there won’t be available for the ride home.
