I am glad to see that the Met is going green by bringing into use electric cars in its fleet but it could do more with road enforcement of cars and garages that remove their diesel particulate filters (DPF).
The dodgy practice of removing DPF from cars is not only risking people’s health, but also putting drivers at risk of prosecution for the simple fact that it’s illegal to drive a car with its DPF removed.
At the beginning of the year, a garage in Bristol has been told to change its advertisements for a diesel particulate filter (DPF) removal service by the Advertising Standards Agency.
Unfortunately the removing the DPF would make it unlikely to fail an MOT as the casing of the filter remains and would satisfy a visual check. So improving MOT tests would help but nonetheless enforcement of cars running around without these filters would certainly help in the meantime.
I suspect this is a big source of increase of diesel emissions in recent years and we could certainly do with some enforcement by the Met in London on this front.
Contents of this blog published as a letter in Evening Standard on 7th of Feb 2017, as shown above and below on its web site.