cam in car,, legal illegal???
 

hey guys, one of my past times is dv movie editing and since i bought my MY05 sti ive been wanting to get a lil movie of the car ,a few friends are helping by being by the road for some exterior shots and i have 1 dvcam in the passenger seat looking out front, 1 in the passenger seat looking out back,1 in my mates car and 1 pointed at dials, so once the movie is done ill have various angles of the car in motion with a nice sountrack, i am gonna be uploading the movie to my site, should be about 60/70mb, i will post the link when complete.

BUT,,,i was wondering, if i was happily driving along at the speed limit with the cameras on or off and the police pulled me over for just a routine spot check(not for speeding) would they be able to look at my cam and see if i had any footage of me possibly creeping over the limit, or would they need a warrant for this.surely if they just pulled me over for no reason they couldnt just tell me that they wanted to see my footage,,,is it not against my rights or something,,,anybody who knows the law on this subject pleez lemme know as it is better to safe than sorry, not that they would find any illegal footage:p

Didnt that guy who raced all the way around the m25 in a ferrari get done on evidence from his own cam?

yeah but didnt he get pulled for speeding anyway, im talking bout if i got stopped when i was just sittin at 30 or somethin,,,like a routine spot or somethin..

...and just to get even more paranoid - could they then decide to enter your house, and confiscate ANY videos, CD-Rs, DVD+-Rs, computer hard drives or whatever. Just in case there was any evidence of a criminal offense?

mb

hehe,,i think ill take my chances lol, besides the editing is gettin done at my mates pad coz he has a new mac which is the nuts..:)

For any recording to be admissable as evidence in a marginal (say, up to 30mph over), the equipment would have to be certified and calibrated. Yours ain't, so I'd say you'd be fine!

sweet mate thanks for the info...but if it was showing footage of 140+ speeds then that could be used even though it ant certified or calibrated,,i would never dream of doing that on a public highway but just curious.

At 140mph you're talking a serious case of criminal law, where the burden of proof required is 'beyond reasonable doubt'. If your brief could convince them that the tape was running at double speed, fine - but I doubt a brief that you or I could afford could win that one. If I was on the jury I think it would be safe to believe your video was reasonable accurate and that you hadn't fitted it to film yourself at 70mph in a high-performance car!

At the end of the day, speeding dangerously is stupid. Filming yourself doing it is doubly stupid. But in-car footage of yourself at 90 on an empty motorway at 5am on a dry summer morning? Seems OK to me!

Different legal system, so has no application as case law here, but still interesting: wasn't there a case of a guy in Japan who got done for circa 150mph in his Skyline, based on footage from his handheld camera filming the speedo?

i think yer right about the skyline guy, but as you said that is plain stupid, somebody who is driving at that speed needs a hefty for being so silly, but as you said driving on the motorway at 5am at about 90/100 doesnt seem a problem to me cam or no cam..

The camera is only recording the speedo - which by law (presumably) should be calibrated. (Not like an external spped trap) I doubt you can claim a dodgy camera is the reason the speedo was at 140 lol

Make sure it has no timestamp on it... Was pre-recorded and not that car ;)

i dont need to worry bout timestamp as me not getting caught isnt the problem, i was just curious,i started the thread to assertain as to whether the police were allowed by law to physically take the camera from me even though they would have no reason to as i would not get caught speeding because i dont break the speed limit,, i also dont swear, dont drink and dont smoke,,,,oh sh1t brb ive left mt fckn smkes down the pub..

Nope. No powers whatsoever to view it/seize it without 'reasonable grounds to suspect' that it was evidence of an offence.

Nope. Even if they were searching your house under a warrant, they cant go on a fishing expedition. They have to search for a specific thing. If however they were searching for stolen dvd's etc and had to view them to see if they were the stolen ones they were looking for. Then you might have a problem.

cheers stainy

I've been out and about filming for over a year and a half now, and been passed many a police car at lights and junctions with my camera suckered to my windscreen (inside), they haven't batted an eye lid.
Only time I've been worried about being stopped was when I had my daughter in with me on a derbyshire run. The camera was in-between us, not blocking my view, but certainly restricting it. Police could maybe have told me to remove it then.
chris.

The main point to consider about the video's of the Skyline, Ferrari, some bike videos, etc is that these guys have gone out with the intention of breaking the law, have video'd themselves breaking the law and have then distributed that video as an example to others. As far as i'm aware those guys only got caught as they had put those tapes in the public realm and the police found them so they weren't actually done for having the camera only for the laws that they had broken on tape.

If you're going to tape the car in everyday use to make a nice little montage for your website with the sole purpose of saying look at my nice car and my excellent editing skills but the tape doesn't contain shots of the speedo at 140 or of you racing another guy through a red light, then you are doing absolutely nothing wrong and nobody will bat an eyelid.

Phew, that was a long one.

thanks rolyatescort, thats what i was looking for!

You're more than welcome.

Don't be paranoid mate, the Police have 300,000 illegal asylum seekers to find and deport first before they even consider coming into your house to search for webcams of cars!!!!!