In Hanoi hundreds of seized vehicles stay unclaimed, and their numbers are rising.

Vehicles seized, exposed to the elements 

A three-hectare area in Long Bien District, designed to house seized vehicles, is becoming overloaded, due to the sharp rise in the number of confiscated vehicles.

The area receives from 120 to 150 vehicles per day. It was designed to receive much less.

The owners of many of these vehicles have failed to reclaim them.

Nguyen Tien Anh, a manager at the site, said, “For the last two or three years the number of abandoned vehicles has been piling up. Now we're up to several hundred. Most of them were taken by police for traffic offences or were thought to be stolen.”

According to Anh, most of these have been left for more than three years and are rapidly aging. The oldest of them need to be recycled as waste metal.

Recently, they had to compound the oldest ones into blocks in order to make room for more confiscated vehicles, he said.

Unclaimed drivers licenses also a problem

The Hanoi Traffic Police, Team No. 1, said that 100 to 200 people they stop for traffic violations never reclaim their licenses per month. They simply get new ones.

According to them, this is a result of lax management over licensing rules. If a drivers license is taken, one can claim that it has been lost or stolen, and taking a new examination only costs VND200,000 (USD9.5).

According to Lieutenant-Colonel Nguyen Van Tong, head of Traffic Police Team No. 1, it only takes about three or four days to get a new license.