Police’s £1m misfuelling bill
We’ve all had it: that horrible, creeping realisation at the petrol pump that you’re merrily filling your car with unleaded… when it takes diesel. Or vice versa. The moment when you can’t quite release your grip on the trigger, even as the wrong fuel tips agonisingly into the tank. Sound familiar?
Well, no matter how many times you’ve done it, you’re still miles behind Her Majesty’s Police Force. An investigation by the Daily Mirror has found that ‘bungling cops’ – there’s a Mirror phrase if ever we heard one – wasted over £1 million by filling police cars with the wrong fuel over the last three years.
That’s £6,500 a week. All for mixing up the big red pump and the big green pump.
The Mirror’s investigation found that police misfuelled almost 5,000 vehicles in three years, with the Metropolitan force the worst offenders: London’s brightest bobbies managed to fill up with the wrong fuel on 671 occasions.
Since big yellow stickers haven’t helped – the North Wales police force managed to misfuel 39 times despite bright yellow ‘DIESEL’ labels on their fuel caps – we thought we’d throw this one out to you: anyone got any helpful hints to help the befuddled police put the right fuel in their jam sandwiches?
Source : http://cupholder.blogs.topgear.com/2009/06/11/police%e2%80%99s-1m-misfuelling-bill/
Misfuelling is one of the most common driver mistakes in the UK, with over 150,000 people filling their diesel with petrol in the last year.