Death in the Streets

A 1958 Buick slumps against the curb, wheels missing, windows shattered, trunk smashed in and insides picked clean. In Manhattan, the car's death passed unnoticed for the simple reason that it was so commonplace.

New York police estimate that 110 cars are abandoned every night, and the figures are proportionately high for other cities in a nation that wears out 6,000,000 cars a year. Furthermore, no one really blames the owners; the cost of taking a car to the junkyard and then getting home again generally exceeds what scrap-metal dealers are willing to pay for the hulk.

Clearing streets of abandoned car carcasses has become a major problem, with public apathy a major obstacle. In New York City, the sanitation department has tried offering free pickup service, and ran a campaign on TV and radio and in newspapers with the telephone number to call. When the two-year count was in, 45,000 cars had been abandoned, but only some 200 people had bothered to telephone.

Treating the Plague. In Chicago, where abandoned derelicts have grown from 11,700 to more than 21,000 annually in the past five years, the police have increased tow cars from two to 36, simplified procedures. Prompt action is winning public support. Up to 125 people a day were calling the police to report abandoned cars. By billing tow charges to the owners, who can be traced by engine registration numbers even when license plates are removed, and speeding up auctions to junk dealers, Chicago is now turning its street blight into a $960,000 profit.

Treating abandoned cars like cases of the plague, Los Angeles police now swoop down on parked autos so swiftly --after 72 hours on streets, only four hours on freeways--that 40% of last year's 8,572-car crop was reclaimed by startled owners. The remainder were sold as junk, brought in more than $75,000, which went to private-garage operators licensed by the city to haul in and store the cars. Detroit police officials have been pressing for a faster method of getting rid of derelict cars, recently got the legislature to pass a bill enabling them to have those worth less than $25 scrapped immediately.

Growing Heaps. Even if cities succeed in clearing their streets of abandoned autos, another problem remains. Noting that there are already up to 40 million cars "piled on the growing junk heaps stretched from coast to coast," Illinois Senator Paul Douglas last week proposed a drastic solution: "Every car should carry with it funds for its own burial." To pay for the burial program, Douglas would tap the federal Treasury for up to $200 million a year, which is the amount brought in by the present 1% excise tax on all new cars.

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