New safety tech trial catches hundreds of drivers breaking law

Take away their phones.

Make them go cold turkey.

Give them a large hammer and instruct them to smash their phones to pieces.

Oh... and if they are on a contract, ensure that the contract remains in force so they are paying for something they can't use. Replacement phone...nah, not for 12 months: if you are found with a phone on your person, then it should be a further ban and removal. If someone needs you, get a pager and find a public phone box to call them back..... 

As my 7 year old nephew says: "That'll learn them."

Well said.

You are correct. When I passed my driving test in the early 80s, traffic police were everywhere, and they had a fearsone reputation. If you did wrong, they gave you a ticket. No ifs, no buts. But they were respected, and the standard of driving was much, much better.

Today the standard of driving is below shit. Cars are too easy to drive, some drive themselves. They have all controls via a touchcreen, even controlling the heating. Factor in mobiles, which people are unable to tear their eyes away from. Too many people go through red lights, safe in the knowledge there are no police to stop them.

And factor in people are not taught how to drive these dys, they are taught how to pass the driving test only. 

It's a shitshow. 

That was my thought too. And the figures don't seem to add up for prosecutions based on the numbers caught. 

That was also one of my initial thoughts! 

Kinda like "no shit, Sherlock" 

In their defence: if they were intelligent people, they probably wouldn't be police officers.

I think the machine learning aspect makes it proportionate.

If you had a human operator examining the interior of every vehicle that went past, you might think that was an invasion of privacy. But with the first pass being done by an algorithm, nobody is going to cast an eye over the majority of law abiding drivers.

As long as they don't keep the imaging/data longer than necessary, they'll be fine with the GDPR.

As long as they don't keep the imaging/data longer than necessary, they'll be fine with the GDPR

That's the national GDPR. The one that Lancashire  Constabulary claims to believe applies in Lancashire is different! This is what the hopeless duffers at LC think is necessary for 'dashcams' to be legal- from the OpSnap Lancs submissions page.

I confirm that I understand that dashcam footage falls under the Category of CCTV and as the footage is taken in the public domain, the Domestic Purposes Exemption under the Data Protection Act/UKGDPR does not apply and therefore all users are Data Controllers in their own right. As such you should be informing the public that they are being filmed and should have some form of notification on your mode of transport as you have responsibilities under the Data Protection Act /UKGDPR

Have you ever seen any such 'form of notification' on any mode of transport and does your local force insist on you having such on your bike before your video of an offending driver is 'legal'?

Dear me, Lancs are truely inept!

The legalities of dashcams get a bit shady with 'parking mode', where they continue to record whilst you are away from the vehicle. That is tantamount to erecting a CCTV camera wherever you so desire; which is definately dubious.

But videoing what you can see in person, in a public place, does not come under the GDPR at all. There can be no expectation of privacy in a public place, with somebody looking at you!!

Dear me, Lancs are truly inept!

It's difficult to believe that even Lancashire officers are dim enough to think that they can get away with insisting all videos that they throw in the bin  see at OpSnapLancs have been taken while the 'video-er' has a 'you are being filmed' notice on motor vehicle or cycle when nobody has even seen anybody on the road with such a notification. It's just a dodge so that they can disown any submission later 'because the complainant swore he had a notice about filming on his bike when he didn't' (you have to or the submission is rejected). I solve this conundrum by inserting in my statement a denial about any such notice.

Is it any different to CCTV for bus lanes, blocking box junctions and illegal turns ? most London councils use that tech and I dont think any have been dismissed on GDPR grounds.

All the machine is looking for is patterns in the video it's been taught to recognise as seatbelt on or off, or holding mobile phone, it no doubt flags those images for review and a police officer checks them before issuing a warning or tor

Duh.  Not all offences warrant a NIP.  See also 90% of close passes (rightly or wrongly)

Sending NIP's would have a better positive effect and make people think twice even if no prosecution followed rather thn not sending out any and therefore giving the impression that you can "get away with it"

I imagine they were not taking action for the majority of the seatbelt cases at present. If they are, I think it would be the first time they have ever been prosecuted by camera and would be a policy shift not appropriate to take during a trial of tech. Not sure what they would have decided to prosecute though - maybe child passengers not wearing a belt, or certain high-risk vehicles?

Any vehicle is "high risk£ and no vehicle and or occupant should be above the law 

Methinks the proposed penalty above is somewhat soft. I would make it 10,000 and ban for proof of using a phone. Same with speeding. The two offences would fund the policing surely.

The seat belt thing I am ambiguous about. The thought that some one else has any say in my safety is immoral to me Eg helmets so why seat belts? 

That goes back to the original campaigns. It became obvious that inspite of it being a no brainer to wear a seatbelt, many people had no brains. The vanishingly rare cases where a seatbelt was a negative seemed to hold more sway than sights of the likes of Gordon Banks and Stuart Milburn being blinded and careers destroyed having been launched through the front window. Of course, any accident also does not just impact the victim, but the people who are left to scrape up the bits and put the victim back together, We really don't want to go back to that. My mum was definitely one who claimed she was better off being thrown clear of an accident rather than being trapped in a car by her seat belt, she really didn't get the idea that being bruised and battered was likely to be better than being a crumpled, potentially brain damaged mush on the road.

Second point is that now cars are fitted with airbags, you have to wear a seatbelt, because airbags are designed to work in conjuction with seatbelts. Airbags aren't soft cosy things, they are things that will do you injury to protect you from a fatality but in combination with an unconstrained adult, they can actually cause far more serious injuries.