Ofcom denies privacy to drunk-dial-and-drive trucker The BBC was justified in broadcasting the unblurred face of a trucker who was pulled for being on the phone, and subsequently arrested for being drunk at the wheel, despite his right to privacy, Ofcom has ruled. The trucker alleges that an episode of Motorway Cops violated his privacy in showing him being pulled, arrested, and …
"[the footage] ...were not an invasion of privacy as they happened in a public place"
Regardless of what highly paid quangees decide, these cop shows are obviously against the spirit of the law in filming people. Why should one wrongdoer, by being filmed and broadcast, suffer much worse punishment than another wrongdoer who committed the same acts but was not filmed ? On what basis ?
And who are Sky/BBC to dole out punishment to citizens ? Punishment is the right of the state only, it cannot be administered by individuals or organisations in a democracy.
Have to admit here I like watching these cop shows. And, yes, we woulod all like to head-butt this tw*t for phone driving.
Whilst I am not defending him for one second, the drink drive limit is not a good measure of being 'off your face' even when twice past it. The drink drive limit is merely the limit at which point your driving is judged to be impaired. Most people could probably be twice over the limit and appear relatively sober. That's why alcohol is so deceptive. Off your face I would consider to be when you are struggling to stand up straight.
I also don't like the filming of these things. The punishments should be meated out in court, not by the TV cameras. Having said that the punishment does seem too lenient.
Did you see the programme? The police were along side the guy in an unmarked HGV tractor in full uniform and filming him with a handheld video recorder. He looked at them and waved (whilst still on the phone), they sounded their horn several times and he kept responding with a jovial thumbs up (still on phone) until a marked unit came in and stopped him. He had a half empty can on Tennant Super on the go in the cab, a few empties and a few more still to go. He then blew 3 times the limit at the roadside, the official 2x the limit was 3 hours later in the nick. He didn't appear sober, the guy was out of it.
If you can't recognise uniformed police officers in the vehicle next to you then in my opinion your driving is impaired.
***"Why should one wrongdoer, by being filmed and broadcast, suffer much worse punishment than another wrongdoer who committed the same acts but was not filmed ? On what basis ?"***
On the same basis that some wrong-doers get away scot-free because Plod doesn't spot them at all. i.e. pure chance.
This moron was driving a large truck while talking on the phone and pissed up to-boot. If the chance of being pilloried on national TV stops others behaving like this (i.e. being a *massive* danger to other road users) then this is certainly in the public interest.
If someone had been filmed but *not* convicted, then, yes, they should have a right to full anonymity. This guy was bang-to-rights and deserved all he got.
"This guy was bang-to-rights and deserved all he got.".
No, he didn't. He deserved to be treated exactly the same as all other offenders caught doing the same thing (phone, drunk driving in HGV). However, his punishment was many times worse than theirs. On what legal basis ? Note that "because I hate him so much", while understandable, is not a counter argument.
Personally I would like to see mobile phone usage punished as severly as drunk driving, and even "hands free" kits should be illegal. I was terrified by an oncoming CRANE driver on Monday morning wandering into my lane while looking at his mobile on a narrow stretch of the A509.
If you commit a crime in the UK you are held to be responsible for your actions in public - ie: In court and reported in the papers. Why should the TV not be able to show your face? As I understand it, they only shade out faces of those found not guilty or not charged at all. ie: Those who aren't criminals.
>Regardless of what highly paid quangees decide, these cop shows are obviously against the spirit of the law in filming people.
Next on the agenda - a Daily Fail rant about PC Plod confiscating some innocent citizen's camera because they took a photograph in a public place.
You can't have it both ways. Either photography is allowed in a public place or it isn't. Arbitrary rules are doomed to failure. It's debatable whether a police station is a 'public place' but I think we'd all feel a bit safer if it was. I'd like to know that people can take pictures of what goes on in there and stand a reasonable chance of publishing them. Sure, it makes sense to check with the police first, but I'd hate to think PC Plod could operate safe in the knowledge of total secrecy.
I've never had my privacy invaded in such a way, I avoided such a shaming by not driving a 44 ton lorry whilst obliterated due to intake of Tennants Super. The guy was 3x the limit at the roadside and had about 8 cans of tramp juice in the cab, so in my opinion he got off lightly.
They should put photos of these people on billboards, perhaps then they would think twice before endangering everyone else with their selfish, reckless behaviour
I rather think this was ofcom taking the easy way out. Maybe we should revisit the issue with some public debate rather than taking ofcom's word for it. That might in turn well agree, but that's not the point. The point is to think about it ourselves and hold a debate about it. Do we want to give up on letting sleeping dogs lie and leaving the past be just because our technology compels us?
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That is perhaps a mite unfair. One-strike-out-forever means no chance at showing you've learned from your mistakes, promising to never ever do that again. You migth argue that a simple fine and no driving for a year is too light, but no chance ever again for not even fscking up bad enough to cause an accident is a bit harsh. I'm thinking this guy's a first-timer, and if he's a professional driver, that's his livelyhood. That means permanently on the dole for some very poor judgement just once. It also amounts to drinking on the job and having been there (though not involving driving lorries on public roads) he might be better off with professional help to get back on track. Best get him that instead, so that once he's clean he can earn his keep again.
Of course if it wasn't his first time, if he's made accidents or worse victims before, has had professional help and has fallen back at least once, well, then it starts to look like we're better off without him driving anything at all. But that's not apparent from this article and the sentence says "first timer" to me. Leave the man /some/ room to try and redeem himself.
If you choose to do something in a public place then you can have no expectation of privacy. That's the law it's also (IMHO) morally sound too.
But the clincher here is that this dickhead gave a cheery thumbs up to the camera. IOW he was perfectly happy to be seen on camera right up until he realised that he was being filmed from a police car.
we live in. I don't have an answer, but it seems with more and more footage being hoovered up and sprayed around the interwebs, we will be seeing more cases where peoples pasts can surface in any number of ways.
Wonder when we hear of a tragedy, as someone who changed their identity gets recognised from an old clip, and tracked down ?
How can any right to be forgotten extend to a situation like this?
Would she be happy if the owners of the program asked to be paid the cost of "air brushing" her out of the whole show?
What would happen if someone messed up in say a quiz show and subsequently decided they had a right to be forgotten, removing a contestant would make the show a nonsense.
What if some "Hollywood" star decided to be become a recluse and demanded the right to be forgotten, would it make any sense for them to have all copies of all of their films doctored?
I'm sure we all have things in are past life that we might now find embarrassing, but we can't demand that everyone involved forgets them.
There have to be limits on any "right to be forgotten"
Re appearing in the audience - there's lots of old archive radio and TV programmes that can't be legally repeated because the broadcaster doesn't - currently - have the right to re-use everybody's contribution. In this case, apparently they technically did have the right because permission had been given.
And Facebook has and uses technology that apparently is good enough to recognise anyone in a picture, although I don't know if it works on SD TV and crowd scenes. And if this is one of those shows where an audience sits in a circle on-stage whilst the featured cast performs between them and the cameras, we probably have a long, close look at everybody who's there.
All those moments won't be lost in time...
"The driver was fined £115 and banned from driving for a year, Ofcom says. He has argued that repeats of the programme would put his return to work at risk."
I'd say he's got off lightly and should shut up. Having proved himself reckless and irresponsible while in charge of a 44 tonne lorry, he should never be allowed to work as a professional driver again. But it shouldn't be repeats of a TV programme that ensure this. His HGV licence should be permanently revoked.
".... a trucker who was pulled for being on the phone, and subsequently arrested for being drunk at the wheel,..." ".... the trucker was found to be almost double the legal limit...." "....The driver was fined £115 and banned from driving for a year,..."
My son was also stopped, no mobile phone, dead of night, empty village road, also twice the limit. He got 250 fine, 17 month ban. I don;t think his sentence was too harsh, but does anyone else think this trucker got of light? Driving a truck, drunk, on the motorway, whilst on a mobile phone?
Well, thanks to good old Aunty, it unlikely he will get another job as a trucker.
Anonymous to protect my son (who has, I am pleased to say, described himself as the worlds biggest prat and believes his sentence is justified).
He certainly did get off lightly, but in all probability he threw himself on the mercy of the court with a sob story about losing his job and the resultant suffering of his family.
This sort of thing drives me mental. If these people really care about their jobs, income and families they would not commit their crimes in the first place.
"He has argued that repeats of the programme would put his return to work at risk."
In which case the BBC would have done us all a favour. Given the amount of damage a 44 tonne truck could do (3-40 times the kinetic energy of a car at the same speed), it occurs to me that the last thing we want is a driver twice over the legal limit driving one of these things, let alone being on a mobile phone as well. It also rather brings into question the sentencing a £115 fine and a one year ban is fairly mild given just how dangerous such a vehicle can be capable of far more damage than a car.
Finally, surely one has to wonder about those recruiting truck drivers if the it's the appearance on a BBC programme which would be the deciding factor. I would rather hope that prospective employers would take more note of his actual conviction and ban, or do such matters no form part of recruitment?
So you're fairly confident that he's not from a particular area that your tiny mind feels the need to stereotype, yet you still feel the need to throw the irrelevant stereotype into the discussion anyway?
While you're at it, why not also try...
I dare say he wasn't French or he would have surrendered to the police straight away, ahahaha. Because that's what French people do, don't they, all the time! Ahahaha. They just go round looking for people to surrender to. Don't they?
Or
I dare say he wasn't Muslim or he would have set fire to the truck and driven it into the police car, ahahaha. Because they're all terrorists, you see! All of them! Ahahaha. They all definitely are; I read it in the Daily Mail. Come on everybody, why aren't you all laughing with me? Ahahaha.
Or maybe
I dare say he wasn't a Reg commentard or he would have shouted a stupid and irrelevant example of a lazy stereotype at the arresting officers.
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The unmarked police vehicle was actually a lorry, though the police driving it were in uniform, and he failed a breath 'test' not 'text', though to be honest he would have failed anything breath related given the number of empty special brew cans in his cab.
I think he should have had his HGV licence revoked, livelihood or not.
It may be that prospective future employers will be put off by the TV footage, but even if he was never filmed he would still have a driving licence showing that he'd recently been banned for drink driving.
Given the cost of insurance these days and the large pool of available drivers without drink-driving bans, I'd say he's screwed anyway. At least in the driving business.
So Mr Colin Hawkley is upset at being filmed whilst driving and under the influence - tough. Maybe Mr Colin Hawkley ought to think himself lucky that they weren't cutting his alcohol filled corpse out of his crashed lorry. I personally have no sympathy for Mr Colin Hawkley, who thinks that he might get another job driving with his convictions.
Do you think I got away with mentioning Mr Colin Hawkley name?
Just wondering?
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