Would you report this or mind your own business?

[shadowkitty3]

There is a man who lives in a van in my town. For the last year or so he has been parked in a particular public car park. He is definitely homeless and lives in the van.

Out of curiosity I put the numberplate into the online car tax checker a few months ago. The van is SORN and the MOT expired four years ago.

So he shouldn't be parked there if the vehicle is SORN but I thought, it's none of my business and not up to me to do anything about it.

However, I've now noticed he has been driving the van around on the road. The van had moved to another part of the car park this week, and another time I saw it actually driving on the main road in the town.

This is concerning as he obviously doesn't have insurance and the vehicle doesn't even have an MOT. I don't know if I should report this to the police, but obviously no one else in the town has bothered. What would you do?

I know what he is doing is wrong. But I wouldn't do anything and I would leave it to the police to do what they will. Its like kicking someone when they are already down otherwise.

It should be reported to protect everybody else from potentially devastating outcomes like the ones above. Tough for the man but maintaining his vehicle home and keeping it legal and safe is on him.

Reporting him for living in his van when it never moved from the same spot in a car park and was causing no issues and put nobody else in danger would be kicking him when he was down.

The OP has seen him driving and the van has moved repeatedly so this wasn't a one off situation where he needed to drive for some emergency. It is not kicking him when he is down to report his illegal activity when he is actively putting other people in danger and knows he should not be on the road.

He is probably driving around and out of the car park as to not break the car parking conditions, and thus draw attention to himself.

Why is everyone assuming he’s a deserving victim because he’s homeless? Maybe his wife kicked him out because he got drunk, used prostitutes & beat her up when she objected. Maybe he’s a nice guy that has just been unlucky in life. We don’t know. All we know is that he is breaking the law by driving an unroadworthy vehicle & therefore endangering other people.

If he was just parked up & not moving I would turn a blind eye. But this is just another egocentric man who thinks the law applies to other people & doesn’t give a shit who he might hurt in the process. Otherwise he would just leave the van parked up & walk to the shops or whatever.

Yet he never did so in the year previously ... So why start now? And if it was just to do with car park conditions then he could easily drive off the car park, park on the road and then drive back in, still illegal but the least risk to anyone but himself.

The OP has seen him driving round town, this is clearly not just an attempt to avoid the conditions of the car park it is him knowingly driving a dangerous vehicle because he can and nobody has stopped him yet.

Why does OP know so much about the movements of this one van?
Seems a bit off to me.
If she has known he is homeless for the past year, why has she not approached the various charities who could help him?

There's a campervan on my street, it's parked in the same place and I have to drive past it every day, there's also a house round the corner that has had a skip in the drive since July last year and another house that has a small fishing boat that usually sits on the driveway but has been gone for the last three weeks. Outside my work there was a broken down car that was abandoned for 6 months before it was moved.

I don't take notes on my neighbours or wander the streets peeping onto their properties but if something is a "fixture" then you notice it as part of the landscape. When that landscape changes (such as in the case of my neighbour whose boat has moved) then you notice because it is out of the ordinary.

So if the van has been in the same place for a year and then has suddenly started moving then the OP is going to notice if it is somewhere she passes/sees frequently.

Why is it the OPs responsibility to get the homeless man help from the authorities but not to report his dangerous behaviour to them?

Yeah, really nasty to report an unroadworthy vehicle driving on the road with the potential to kill someone 🙄 If OP had come on here and said "money's a bit tight, should I just miss my MOT and keep driving?" she'd be rightly flamed. Give your head a wobble!

It's a potentiality dangerous, unroadworthy vehicle driving around near a park. What if the brakes are dodgy and he hits a child?

Yeah, bigger things to worry about than potentially unroadworthy vehicles driving near parks full of children 🙄

You'd say that if his unroadworthy vehicle hit your child?

What a mean thing to consider leave the bloke alone.

Why is it the OPs responsibility to get the homeless man help from the authorities but not to report his dangerous behaviour to them?

Because she is not reporting him out of some sort of faux concern... she only knows he is breaking the law because he is homeless.
I bet if she wrote down 20 number plates she saw today on her travels, at least 1 or 2 would also be breaking the law too.

And why is your first thought that he's some awful man who was kicked out by his wife?

Isn't it more likely that he's moving his van in a bid to avoid being clamped/towed for staying in the same spot for too long? Regardless of his circumstances, if he's sleeping in his van, he needs help.

Tell Streetlink and they'll assess the situation and try to get him the help he needs. Which should have the happy outcome of him no longer living in a carpark and moving his van back and forth.

And she would be 100% in the right to report those drivers too.

Regardless of how she came about the information the OP knows he is doing something illegal and dangerous by driving the car when it is not taxed, insured or MOTed and hasn't been for years. She is not in the wrong to report that to the appropriate authorities.

She had no intention of reporting the man when he was not putting others in danger (IE in the time after she checked his van info and he wasn't moving it, she could have but didn't report him) but now she knows for a fact that he is putting others in danger by actively driving the van on public roads then she has a duty to report it and is not wrong for doing so.

Like I said earlier, if he was still just living in the van and never driving it then I'd say live and let live but if she knows he is driving the van then I would report him in a heartbeat as I have see first hand the consequences of an uninsured, unMOTed and untaxed car being on the road and causing the deaths of innocent people when they could have been so easily prevented by just one person reporting them.

The posters who keep saying ‘jeez don’t be mean’ are, quite frankly, acting like children who can’t process tedious adult information like ‘there’s a reason we have MOTs’ They’re offering no reasoned response to all the people who have pointed out the very real dangers.

It’s irrelevant whether you think OP is a busybody or pathetic or needs to ‘get a life’. Try some critical thinking.

Great idea!

Yes, I agree. I hope they've all gone quiet because once "what if the van crashed into your kids" was put to them several times they realised they're wrong about this situation being okay.

Is it the responsibility of OP to go round checking which vehicles are road worthy? Should we all
be doing this?

If only there was some people who’s job is was to police this kind of thing 🤔

Well, there is a shared responsibility for reporting crime in a civilised society? Didn’t you know that? Or do you think the police magically happen upon all the crimes by being in the right place at the right time? Or do people ring them? 🤔

If you do OP, I'd be very scared of your karma

Well, there is a shared responsibility for reporting crime in a civilised society? Didn’t you know that?

I didn’t say there wasn’t.

Or do you think the police magically happen upon all the crimes by being in the right place at the right time?

Can you quote me saying that?

Or do people ring them?

Have you bothered to contact OP to get details of this crime so you can report it. If not why?

Yup.
Be kind.

Threads like this make me question why I come onto MN. Checking up on a homeless person with a view to getting them in trouble, and people agreeing with it! My god.