A specialist patrol team has been tasked with helping more than 400 motorists every day that accidentally put the wrong fuel in their car and make the expensive mistake of misfuelling.

RAC Fuel Patrol is a service available to both RAC members and non-members that aims to get drivers back on the road faster after misfuelling.

The patrol vans are fitted with specialist equipment to extract the contaminated fuel and flush the fuel system on the spot with motorists driving away, on average, 40 minutes after the patrol arrives at the scene.

However, if motorists do run the engine the damage could be a lot more costly to put right and the vehicle would need to be towed to a garage to assess the extent of the damage.

A recent study by the British Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA) reported an estimated 150,000 misfuelling cases per year.

A number of RAC Fuel Patrols are currently operating in London, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Buckinghamshire, the south west, Liverpool, the south coast and part of the West Midlands. The service will continue to expand over the next few months to cover additional misfuelling hot spots.

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