They flush out the speed cameras and get a hell of a fine
They flush out the speed cameras and get a hell of a fine
The offence committed by these people, aged between 23 and 56? They exchanged information on the presence of speed cameras and police checks on their voicemail messages. The case, which took place in the canton of Lucerne, was announced on Monday by the Public Prosecutor's Office in Sursee (LU), which points out that the people convicted are those who actively wrote information in the chat room. Since 1 January 2013, Article 98a of the Federal Road Traffic Act has provided for a fine for anyone who "issues public warnings to road users about official traffic controls, provides a service warning of such controls for a fee, or uses a device for this purpose that is not intended solely to detect official traffic controls"."According to Pascal Rytz, a Geneva lawyer, "a message is considered to be public if it is disseminated or made available outside the private sphere, i.e. to friends or persons bound by a special bond of trust". For him, the mobile phone is a good example, as he already explained in a column dedicated to this topic in 2019: "Community applications that indicate, by means of information provided by users, where controls are located fall within the scope of the law", explains Pascal Rytz. He adds that the threat of sanctions is aimed "more at those who actively provide information than at those who merely passively follow the information displayed on their smartphones, which in any case seems more difficult to apprehend". "A message is considered public if it is disseminated outside the context of friends or people linked by a particular bond of trust. "Pascal Rytz, lawyerThe fact that the case took place in Lucerne is rather piquant. In this canton, the police publish the location of fixed and semi-stationary speed cameras every week. This is implemented on the basis of a political proposal and a government order. Only mobile installations, laser measurements and traffic controls are not published. These are the very ones that the WhatsApp group wanted to flush out.
