Police Post Photo of Car So Messy the Driver Couldn’t Grab Hand Brake and Crashed

Police Post Photo of Car So Messy the Driver Couldn’t Grab Hand Brake and Crashed
The interior of a rubbish-filled car posted by British police on June 26, 2019. (Hampshire Police via Hants Road Policing/Twitter)
Tom Ozimek
6/28/2019
Updated:
6/28/2019

Britain’s “messiest car” was involved in a crash after the driver couldn’t deploy the handbrake because it was blocked by a mountain of rubbish.

Hampshire Police’s road team published a photograph of the car on Twitter on June 26 following the incident, adding that the driver “couldn’t get the hand brake on and rolled back into a parked vehicle.”

The shocking photo shows a cluttered Volkswagen with seats nearly buried in garbage, including food and drink wrappers, discarded flyers, and bits of crumpled old newspaper.

Hampshire Police’s post sparked numerous reactions on social media.

One user wrote, “That is actually the most messy car I have ever seen in my life.”

Another wrote, “It’s like a rubbish (excuse the pun) version of the generation game! It’s got just about everything in it.”

The police joked in the post that British politician Boris Johnson’s car “is a dream compared to this one!” in an apparent reference to a recent snap of Johnson’s less-than-tidy vehicle.

Authorities have not yet announced any criminal charges.

Explorers Find Garbage in Deepest Part of World’s Oceans

The incident recalls the case of a team of ocean explorers making the staggering find of garbage where it doesn’t belong—at the bottom of the world’s deepest body of water.

Texas businessman and deep-sea explorer Victor Vescovo descended 35,853 feet into the depths of the Pacific Ocean to shatter the record for the world’s deepest dive—and he found plastic trash.

The former U.S. Navy Reserve Commander, dove 52 feet deeper than any human before him, the Five Deeps Expedition team disclosed in a news release (pdf) on Monday, May 13.

Vescovo’s solo dive was punctuated by 248 minutes spent on the bottom exploring the basin, which the expedition team said “is now the longest period of time ever spent on the bottom of the ocean by an individual.”

His double record-setting dive was part of a mission to explore the uncharted depths of the world’s oceans, collect scientific samples, and look for new species.

New Species and Plastic Waste

But aside from investigating exotic geological formations and finding “at least three new species of marine animal,” Vescovo also found examples of ever-pervasive human waste.
According to the Dallas News, at the very bottom of the Challenger Deep Vescovo found a plastic bag and other bits of trash.

Sir David Attenborough, a naturalist and wildlife campaigner, reacted to Vescovo’s unsavory find at the bottom of the Mariana Trench by calling plastic in the sea an “unfolding catastrophe” that we “ignore at our peril.”

In an editorial for i news, Attenborough wrote, “I have seen for myself the effects of plastic pollution on some of our planet’s most precious species and natural places—an unfolding catastrophe that has been overlooked for too long. But we ignore it at our peril.”
Dr. Alan Jamieson, the expedition’s chief scientist, stands on top of the submersible the Limiting Factor, which plumbed the depths of the Mariana Trench on missions between April 28 and May 5, 2019. (Reeve Jolliffe/Five Deeps)
Dr. Alan Jamieson, the expedition’s chief scientist, stands on top of the submersible the Limiting Factor, which plumbed the depths of the Mariana Trench on missions between April 28 and May 5, 2019. (Reeve Jolliffe/Five Deeps)

Vescovo’s dive was one of five made by the team between April 28 and May 5, which included the deepest marine salvage operation ever attempted.