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Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

The Private Car Operator is interesting. I'd like to know what he did to receive the fine.

And because a man illegally used a dashcam, he was fined 300 euros. It was a camera recording the use of a car from the driver's point of view, which is illegal. Two people were reprimanded for using surveillance cameras for their own home without permission.

Dash cams are generally not legal in Austria for privacy reasons. This predates GDPR (article from 2013: https://www.oe24.at/oesterreich/politik/Video-Ueberwachung-a...).

I think nowadays dash cams might be allowed if they don't store the video unless an accident has occurred, but someone from Austria has to confirm.

Interesting. Well, I guess that means I can’t visit Austria and drive. The dashcam is one of my coping mechanisms for OCD. I do get their concerns, though.

I suspect they’re going to roll that back if insurance fraud increases.

The laws for this was recently refined in Denmark, you are allowed to run a buffer (so that you can record x minutes up to an accident) but you are not allowed to save it permanently without hitting a button.

Most dashcam I’ve seen have a running buffer of, e.g. 2 and a half hours. Would that be permitted?

> The dashcam is one of my coping mechanisms for OCD.

I don't understand. Care to explain?

One of the manifestations of my OCD is that if I hit a bump on the road, something as simple as a manhole cover that’s a few millimeters different in height or less, or if I spy someone emerging into my rear view mirror that I didn’t expect, or if someone is hiding behind a pole and I suddenly see them in my peripheral after passing them, my immediate and inconsolable thought is that I’ve hit them.

To deal with it, I’ll do a lap around that spot to make sure I didn’t hit them. That lap can result in other bumps that I then have to make sure I didn’t hit anyone during.

This can repeat for a very, very long time.

To deal with it, I have a front and rear dashcam that I can go review the footage after I park.

Of course I haven’t hit anyone, but the fear and stress that I might have is debilitating and can be for an hour.

The dashcam allows me to review footage later; or, more often, calm myself long enough to think rationally and recognize what has happened as a moment of OCD and move on.

This appears anxiety related, with indeed the dashcam helping to cope with this specific occurrence. I don't know which other issues you have regarding anxiety, but you might want to look into a more global solution. If its only with regards to dashcams, then (depending on your demographics) avoiding driving in Austria is likely a better solution.

Full disclosure: My previous diagnosis was GAD. Now I have an autism diagnosis. I use medication to feel less agitated and nervous. These work, for me, though also force me to zoom in less. YMMV.

I'm diagnosed with OCD and have many of the symptoms for it. It tends to stay relatively low-grade and not life impacting, so long as I do the thing I said here. When it gets out of hand, I need to remember to follow through more with what this book told me to do: https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Lock-Twentieth-Anniversary-Obse...

That's the one my therapist had recommended.

I try to avoid medication, but that's a personal preference. I do hope you the best on your journey!

edit: removed a word that made my sentence mean what I didn't mean for it to mean.

Hey, though my comment was meant to be genuine I can, on reflection, understand that my comment got you angry. It did not occur to me that OCD could be a separate diagnosis even though I knew it is a specific ICD. Thanks for the book tip, I've added it to my list (I'm interested in related symptoms to [my] autism and some other PDs.)

I believe some court ruled that using a dashcam violated GDPR since it was recording people’s “identifiable information” without their consent

I wonder how this will interact with self driving cars and all their always on, always recording cameras.

Or even just regular cameras. If I take a picture of something unrelated, and the background happens to contain a license plate on a car, or the face of a person walking by, am I at risk for recording a person's identifiable information?

No. The so called "Freedom of panorama" [1] will protect you from such things. As long as the license plate is not the main aspect of the image, you should be fine.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_panorama

Do self driving cars actually record things? As in, store the video? It seems to me they can just process the incoming videostream without storing it, right?

Yes and they upload to the cloud and a lot of vandals have been caught this way.

Did not know that. That's probably not GDPR compliant, no.

You can make that "definitely not compliant".

The case here is Austria where local privacy laws disallow any use of CCTV/Dashcams unless they only film private property. Exceptions to this require a permit. This in itself independent of GDPR but the same agency is tasked with enforcing it and some of the laws overlap now.

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