A snoop's charter?

[Workingman]

Another one.

In West Yorks anybody with a video camera can now make a video of what they "think" might be a road traffic offence and send it to the police. The footage will then be reviewed and action taken, or not.

It is all well and good when an offence is obvious, such as excessive speeding, running red lights and so on. Those imbeciles should be punished.
However, what about when the alleged offence is not proven? Will the videoed driver be informed that they had been reported? What will happen to the "evidence"? Will it be kept for a period of time or will it be destroyed? Will the person taking the video be informed of the decision. And will a tally be kept of the videos sent in by that individual?

Some people will be sending in video after video of the most minor of minor misdemeanours simply because they can. Others will take it upon themselves to become vigilante 'traffic police' videoing every perceived infraction. What action will be taken against them?

Another Pandora's box has been opened.

I have asked my local councillor and the police for answers to the above questions but without reply.

[Kaz]

Mick had some dashcam footage of some very dangerous driving on our road, right by the school. This idiotic man mounted the pavement right by the footpath leading out of school grounds to get round stalled traffic He was asked for the footage and gave it gladly!

[Suff]

As would we all Kaz.

WM, I read about this with Norfolk and Suffolk police a while ago. Where they were receiving about 150 video's a month.

Go watch that video, 20 seconds in they show a BMW, coming up to a roundabout on what is clearly either a 60mph or 70mph stretch of road. The car enters the roundabout, passes the, clearly going slower car on the inside, in the correct lane and without causing any avoiding action and exits in the outside lane. It may be forceful driving but the driver never broke a law, clearly didn't exceed the speed limit because the car is not capable of accelerating at that rate after having slowed so much. But it was sent in; why? Because the person sending it in is incapable of driving a dual carriageway road and roundabout?

Then perhaps the person sending it in should be sent for driving lessons?

Perhaps that is the required constraint.

There is no doubt that this video has some truly shocking and dangerous driving in it. But it also bears the seeds of what you fear WM.

[Workingman]

Kaz, in the video there is a similar incident to the one you describe and Mick did the right thing. But Suff's clip of the BMW shows what is wrong. The BMW did nothing wrong and it is fair to note that the roundabout has three lanes - one a dedicate left turn. However, that video is still on file and that is one of the things which concerns me. There will eventually be thousands of clips where no offence was committed and yet the details of the car (driver, owner) are kept on file. It is wrong. It is also wrong thet drivers will not even know that their details have been checked and are in a database somewhere, a database that might get hacked and the information sold on to.... whoever.

[cromwell]

All totalitarian countries had their curtain twitchers and informers. Hopefully we are not going in that direction quite yet, although officials using language during the pandemic to the effect that it is a citizen's "civic duty to inform" on law breaking neighbours is not encouraging.
Neither is the number of people gleefully seizing the opportunity to grass somebody up.