10-22-2019, 11:09 PM
(10-22-2019, 10:47 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:(10-22-2019, 08:30 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Excellent point. “Innocent until proven guilty” is for criminal penalties in a court of law, not for lesser consequences in different situations. That doesn’t mean that we should constantly have to prove our innocence, but being required to take driver training after a collision isn’t exactly a Draconian punishment.
I think if you are "constantly" in collisions, then yes you in fact should "constantly" be having to prove yourself innocent.
This certainly isn't an unusual situation, and does apply in more than one western country.
Currently, unless police respond there isn't even the consideration of charges...the police reporting centre is nothing more than a publicly funded insurance adjuster.
No argument from me about people who are regularly in collisions. I was speaking more generally e.g. imagine if they rounded up everybody who was caught on video within 1km of a burglary and made them all give an alibi, then charge anybody without an alibi. Clearly inappropriate, and exactly the sort of thing that “innocent until proven guilty” is supposed to avoid. But having to take driver training after being in a not-proven-not-at-fault collision? Fine with me.
To your last point, especially nowadays where transit vehicles are basically mobile surveillance units, why can’t we use that surveillance information to nail dangerous drivers? It shouldn’t take an officer on scene to issue a ticket for failure to stop at a streetcar door or whatever.
In general I support strong privacy protection — police departments should not be able to do fishing expeditions in the video archives, for example. But people who violate the right-of-way of transit vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians (and even other motor vehicles for that matter) do not deserve to be able to hide behind exaggerated privacy protections.