Scrap metal in yards. How to remove an abandoned car

Viktoriia Hubareva

In cramped yards of post-Soviet cities, there are often cars that have long broken down. We don't know what happened to their owners, but we see: the wheels are down, the windows are broken, the doors and hood are already quite rusty.

At best, such cars simply take up space, and at worst, they become a place of storage of garbage, syringes; from time to time such cars are set on fire by hooligans, and then they not only spoil the air for residents of all nearby houses but can also cause tragedy. In 2018, in the Sviatoshynskyi district of Kyiv, 4 children were injured in an explosion in an abandoned car. A grenade, left in the car's glove compartment, exploded when the children opened it.

Even then, the Kyiv authorities thought about simplifying the mechanism of collecting stray vehicles, as it was developed in Soviet times when cars left unattended were the exception rather than the yard tradition. Therefore, the current procedure for evacuation of ownerless vehicles has a Soviet basis and is very outdated: one department, responsible for order and provision of urban amenities, has no authority to act on former cars; the other one has the authority, but the funds, in case of all stages and auction, go to something else.

Another problem is that Ukraine has no procedure for disposing of such stray cars; all of them must be transported to a special parking lot and remain there indefinitely.

And if the solution to the first problem is a matter of time and bureaucracy, then to get rid of the second one, you'll have to make a little more effort, buy equipment and set up recycling processes.