How much damage does towing a car that's in "Park" or in gear do?

[Freefaller]

I think I know the answer to this... it's pretty bad for the gearbox and drivetrain in general. But if it's only over 5m or so how bad is it?

The reason I ask, is that a large truck came down out road (small town in the countryside) in the evening after people have returned from work. There were a handful of cars parked on the road - here's a google earth photo:



It's a small 30mph road, but as you can see cars park on both sides (which means that only 1 car can drive down the road at a time).

The driver of said truck had an wide load (one of those traveller-type homes) - and to his credit did knock on doors and try and get people to move their cars. However his support car came along and strapped a towing rope onto 2 cars (one at a time, and directly on the axle, car was untaxed and not MOT ) and tugged them out of the way, no more than 5m or so.

I have a couple of questions - how dangerous would it be for those drivers to drive their cars? Could it cause serious damage?

It feels wrong but not sure where the law stands on this - is what they did illegal? But if not, I'm worried that they may have damaged the cars.

I know most of the people on the street but don't know which car belongs to whom. Would you leave a note? Or try and speak to them tomorrow?

 

[Freefaller]

If it is an automatic in park the damage could be substantial and well into the thousands to rectify if not a write off, I can't really comment on the dangerous side of it - but I'd imagine it has potential to be highly dangerous but most likely the damage would be noticeable as soon as you tried to drive it.

That's what I feared. I'm not usually a busy body, but it was quite a site seeing such a big truck on our road, I only caught it by chance.

 

[Freefaller]

If they're legally parked on a public road I'd be questioning why a private company has any right to touch them.

It's a public road with a single yellow, but it's after hours, so technically completely legal to park there.

 

[Freefaller]

Wouldn't that come under criminal damage? What gives that company the right to drag legally parked cars out of the way?

This is what I don't know. They don't have the right I don't think? but then again there was 0 chances of him reversing the truck, there were already a dozen cars / vans behind it. The fact that the car that towed them was not road legal makes it feel super dodgy.

 

[Freefaller]

It's supposed to cause a lot of damage, but in reality I've seen lots of cars towed very short distances in park and none of them have ever been damaged.

I mean they didn't move it very quickly, but still the tyres were skipping a fair bit, I doubt it did the car any good.

 

[Freefaller]

The support car? certain business vehicles won't show as having tax and MOT though that is more appropriate to car garages/dealers than that kind of use AFAIK.

ah fair enough.

I just don't know who the owners are unfortunately, just want to make sure they're aware that their car was moved forcefully (albeit not fast). Maybe I'm making something out of nothing. It just didn't feel right - but at the same time, the truck had nowhere to go owing to the exceptional load.

 

[Freefaller]

possibly a huge amount of damage, sounds illegal to do that to other peoples property. The cars may have been SORN and legally allowed to be there as long as they did not drive the cars.

I thought SORN had to be off the public highway?

 

[Freefaller]

So I guess nothing hugely bad was done but sounds like a grey area. Those cars still haven't moved I guess they're away.

 

[Freefaller]

DVLA are quite hot on it if people start reporting it or they're in the area doing checks as it's easy money

Our sleepy town wouldn't get many visits to be fair! A lot of vehicles tend to be used on farms and so on.