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Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

> but if you're loaning your car out to someone who speeds, at least some of the culpability falls on you.

Not in Germany it doesn’t. Only the actual driver can be found guilty of speeding, even by speed-camera.

I understand they’ll take pictures of the front of the vehicle and check against who’s lives at the registered address. Not sure if it’s an infraction for the registered owner to refuse to identify the likely driver.

Source: my German car rental company didn’t auto-pay anything, they forwarded me a “ticket” from the police department asking me to pay 20 EUR to go away or they’ll try to identify the actual driver and try to charge them a higher fine.

While this is more work, I think it’s reasonable for us to expect law enforcement to identify the guilty and not just convict someone that’s easy to blame.

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Even better: in Germany, the cameras black out the passenger's side of the car automatically for privacy reasons, so that only the driver is identified.

This was a problem in 2008 when a car with steering wheel on the right systematically got caught speeding. The driver knew full well what was going on an placed a muppet in the passeger's seat. The picture is fantastic:

https://gizmodo.com/the-muppets-animal-caught-speeding-drivi...

In Washington State they go one step further: cameras can only take pictures from the rear. They're not allowed to actually take a picture of the driver.

So it becomes a civil matter between the state and the vehicle I assume? Registered owner automatically becomes the liable party?

Yes (same in Ontario, Canada generally). The owner gets the civil fine, but there are no demerit points put on anyone's license.

If one is pulled over for speeding (or anything else), then the officer can identify the driver and they get points as well.

I think points are used as an (dis)incentive for people who would be otherwise be willing to just cut a cheque. Too many points and you start getting insurance problems.

* https://www.ontario.ca/page/understanding-demerit-points

Seems to be somewhat common in a few jurisdictions:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_system_(driving)

This is funny, but in repeated cases the authorities would require the car owner to keep a driving log for that car. So this wouldn't work for very long.

At that time, British and Irish governments didn't share licence plate ownership data with their continental European counterparts. German authorities couldn't trace the owner of the car without a physical stop. Situation has changed in recent years and I understand that now the data is exchanged.

Really? They can require that in Germany? Imagine if they did that in the US, I suspect most drivers here are unable to read.

Not unusual for commercial trucking, or to satisfy the IRS when you have business writeoffs for mileage.

German here. Indeed only the driver of a car is punished for speeding. The burdon is on the officials to determine the driver. But they will send an official inquiry to the car owner to name the driver of the car, if the identification is not obvious by a photo. There are cases where no one gets the ticket, because the driver is not named by the car owner, sometimes for very valid reason. With a larger group of people having access to that car, this can be true. As a consequence, sometimes people get off their ticket.

There is a catch however: while you might get out of a ticket once or twice, the authorities can order you to keep a drivers log in the car. That means, a written log of every single drive has to be kept. So that there is never any ambiguity of naming drivers going forward. And having to keep logs of all your drives going forward is something you really want to avoid.

In other European countries where it's also illegal to just fine the owner rather than the actual driver, the police sends an official inquiry about who was driving the car at the time. Providing false information or refusing to provide information at all is punishable by law, you have to name someone and take responsibility for the veracity of that information. The owner is legally responsible for knowing who is driving their car at all times, with the exception of the car being stolen.

In practice this just leads to a lot of penalty points or license suspensions for the 80 year old (grand)parents, or anyone who has a license but never drives.

Famous case in UK where lying about the speeding caused the problems (for a Member of Parliament):

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jan/29/labour-mp-fi...

I have a friend where it often seems to be one of his similar looking cousins in Pakistan who was driving his car too fast.

Sweden: it’s not possible to charge an owner for a crime, only the driver. It’s also not a crime to not name the driver.

If a speed camera photo is blurry or dark (like in a place with darkness most of the year) the case is as far as I know closed and no inquiry is made.

If I realize too late that I’m going to speed past a traffic cam then I usually just hold my hand up near the wind screen to cover my face and the risk of a ticket would be nearly zero.

There has been talk of making it an administrative fee rather than a crime (like parking tickets) which would make it possible to attribute to cars and not owners.

I wonder how COVID-19 inspired mask wearing has impacted the identifying of drivers.

In Finland - is has a bit: https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/face_masks_fool_finlands_...

Seems weird to me, as someone who’s used to the UK system of photo from the back and the owner being responsible for identification of the driver, that people hadn’t already figured this one out :)

Sounds like they want the burden of proof to be on the accuser.

Oh I totally agree the Finnish way makes far more sense in terms of accountability and process.

Just was wondering that, if you were the sort of person who habitually broke the limit and didn’t much care for the dangers, wearing PPE might have already become part of every drive, regardless of the pandemic situation.

In Israel, it is up to the owner of the car to name the driver (or accept responsibility) if no other evidence is available.

Rental companies name the renter, which is what you describe, and it is then up to the renter to accept or name a sub-lesser; by default, the responsible party is the latest to accept, or for court to determine (but that would likely require dissenting potential drivers to file legal complaints against each other)

Occasionally, people use this to equalize penalty points in a household (say, married couples) because other than fines, there’s a point system where 3-5 nontrivial tickets in as many years will get your license suspended or revoked for a while, and other sanctions.

This practice - admitting a crime you didn’t commit - is of course illegal, and not very prevalent - but there have been a few high profile cases involving famous (and infamous) people caught doing that.

> Not in Germany it doesn’t. Only the actual driver can be found guilty of speeding, even by speed-camera.

-Same in Norway - ticket is sent to registered owner by default, if s/he contests the claim, s/he is summoned to the local police and shown the photo. If s/he claims not to know who drove the car or refuse to identify the driver, the police may investigate if it's a slow day in the office - say, call you for a formal interrogation (during which you are legally obliged to provide truthful answers or else get slapped for obstruction of justice), compare the speedcam photo to other members of your household &c.

In short, the owner of the vehicle will never be on the hook for a speeding ticket with unknown driver - but is required to assist the police in finding out who the offender is.

Two identical twins back where I grew up claimed to have gamed this system on numerous occasions - claiming they couldn't remember which brother had driven the car on the day in question.

After all, refusing to cooperate is a crime. Not remembering isn't.

In San Francisco they intimidate you and claim you’re legally obligated to tell them who was driving.

They did this to me when someone ran a red light in a car I’d sold (and electronically transferred) six months prior.

I’d suspect what they did wouldn’t hold up in court if it weren’t for the fact that the San Francisco court house was engaged in this behavior.

Apparently, this scenario is so common in California that places that accept cars as donations often have a specialist to help donors deal with extortion demands over revenue tickets.

As long as we are talking about a speeding ticket, you are correct. But since around 2017 it is a crime to conduct an illegal road race. This covers extreme cases of speeding with quite harsh punishments: impounding of the vehicle, high fines or jail time for the driver - and the owner if the owner could have reasonably suspected that the driver was about to do it.

In Alberta, Canada, speed camera tickets are treated more like parking tickets (at least last time I checked which was quite a while ago). They are issued to the owner of the car. There are no license penalty points, however, as they don't even attempt to identify the driver.

It works like this in Sweden also, and in Latvia as far as I could tell.

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