Guy Ritchie banned for texting at the wheel

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thirdcrank
Posts: 36780
Joined: 9 Jan 2007, 2:44pm

Re: Guy Ritchie banned for texting at the wheel

Post by thirdcrank »

On the matter of surveillance and in particular the human rights of the drivers of motor vehicles, I think it's worth remembering this judgment of the Privy Council, subsequently supported on appeal by the European Court of Human Rights in a case involving the human right to avoid self-incrimination (AKA the right to silence) the point being that the notice served by police on registered keepers and others requiring them to identify the driver at the time of an alleged offence infringes that right. After a lot of discussion, the ECHR said the UK's procedure was OK

ECHR judgement

The following from the late Lord Bingham quoted in the linked judgment, goes to the heart of this:-

[a]ll who own or drive motor cars know that by doing so they subject themselves to a regulatory regime. This regime is imposed not because owning or driving cars is a privilege or indulgence granted by the State but because the possession and use of cars (like, for example, shotguns ...) are recognised to have the potential to cause grave injury.


Top Spanish judge Javier Borrego Borrego (so good they named him twice) supported the ruling but submitted an individual concurring opinion which began:-

Although I too voted against finding a violation, I regret that I am unable to subscribe to the approach and reasoning adopted by the majority in this judgment.


And then includes this nugget:

... The Court, in paragraph 57, accepts the wise reasoning of Lord Bingham, a member of the Privy Council. I would point out that, according to that opinion, “[a]ll who own or drive motor cars know ...”. If indeed, “[a]ll ... know that by doing so they subject themselves to a regulatory regime ...”, we must ask: why spend twelve pages trying to explain what everyone already knows?

Making simple things complicated is tantamount to choosing a path which is not only wrong but dangerous, ...

(My emphasis.)


My point here is that the requirement to identify the driver is virtually the only element of a specific regulatory regime for drivers in the UK ie apart from a few things like yellow line parking, contested cases still call for all the king's horses and all the king's men, which means we have reached a point where much enforcement of traffic law has collapsed. (A point I've been making for ages and which the HMI has got round to recognising.)

(The link to the ECHR judgment is courtesy of snibgo, who not only posted about it, but used a link which still works.)
Last edited by thirdcrank on 25 Jul 2020, 5:48pm, edited 1 time in total.
Cyril Haearn
Posts: 15215
Joined: 30 Nov 2013, 11:26am

Re: Guy Ritchie banned for texting at the wheel

Post by Cyril Haearn »

@r2
If I saw the driver behind me in a queue using their phone I should simply stop and refuse to move on until they switch it off
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