Last week there was a bit in the local ET about not leaving your car running, plus an inane readers letter published in the viewpoint section of the paper by some one who seems to think that the local council want to attack him personally and wreck the turbo on his car. Well, being pessimistic about all things Council I can understand his point of view (I also have a Turbo on my car) so decide to do a bit of research and find out more. It would appear that this is an old piece of national legislation which has been on the statute books since 1986 but has been revised and dusted off with the aim of reducing local pollutants by encouraging motorists to switch off their engine when they are idling. This in its self strikes me as being nothing other than common sense and is something I've done (even with my turbo) for many years. It does strike me as mildly amusing that the government / council feel it necessary to actually legislate for this while, at the same time they allow the building of new coal power stations and a 3rd runway at Heathrow. Again this is another example of how big business can forge government policy and the government then look to hitting the likes of you and me with the responsibility of reduced carbon emissions. Back to leaving my car running on Scunthorpe Highstreet... Being a cynic, and knowing that certain councilors have certain business interests (in this case a taxi firm or two) I decide to look into the detail of the report and find out if there are any exceptions. At this point I'm about to give the council a complement - rare I know, but guys, good web site. here I could find everything I needed to go pretty much straight to the article and also download the background briefing paper directly from the council web site here So in summary, under the Regulation 98(2) of the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986 you can leave your vehicle running under the following conditions: 1 - Where a vehicle is stationary owing to the necessities of traffic e.g. when vehicles are queuing at traffic lights 2 - Where an engine is being run so that a defect can be traced and rectified e.g. when a disabled vehicle is being attended to by a breakdown / recovery agent 3 - Where machinery on a vehicle requires the engine to be running e.g. where the engine powers refrigeration equipment, the compaction equipment in a refuse vehicle, the suction / brushes to a road sweeping vehicle 4 - Where a vehicle is propelled by gas produced by the functioning of plant carried on the vehicle The report goes on to suggest however that "common sense" is to be applied when issuing a fixed penalty fine, and that certain mitigating circumstances should be considered such as: 1 - On a cold day at a taxi rank 2 - If the driver is elderly to keep warm 3 - If the vehicle is a recovery vehicle carrying out a recovery and needing to run lights off the engine 4 - To help defrost a windscreen in very cold weather So I was pleased that there was something about taxi's in there after all. Local councils were given powers of enforcement in 2002 to issue a fixed penalty charge for this. The legislation came in to force in schedule 11 of the 1995 environment act (so our council has been fantastically slow at implementing this), and is backed up by The Road Traffic (Vehicle Emissions) (Fixed Penalty) (England) Regulations 2001 which lets the council take you to court if you don't pay up.