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Autobahn near Berlin (symbol picture): Flashed because the distance is too short
Photo: Patrick Pleul / ZB
He wasn't a notorious speedster or shovel, but the man was spotted anyway.
The offense: he had driven too close with his VW Golf Variant on the A61 near Waldlaubersheim.
The man was traveling at 123 kilometers per hour, that was allowed.
But he should have kept a distance of around 60 meters - he didn't.
He came close to the vehicle in front of him up to 27 meters.
It recorded a temporarily installed bridge camera.
The man should pay 75 euros and get a point in the traffic offender register in Flensburg.
Above all, the driver defended himself against the point that it would have been his first entry in Flensburg.
He also asserted in court that the vehicle in front had switched to its lane shortly beforehand, and that was the only reason why it had come up so close.
In the end, it didn't matter at all: An apparently typical data protection breach by the authority saved the golf driver from worse - and could also give many other traffic offenders hope to get away with it more lightly.
The authorities apparently do not always take data protection very seriously, which can have a positive effect on those affected in court.
In favor of the driver
In the case of the Golf driver, the Central Fine Office in Rhineland-Palatinate had sent a hearing sheet to the owner of the vehicle, as is customary.
At the same time, she made an inquiry to the "driver's license register" in Flensburg.
So she wanted to find out whether the man was already listed there.
The fines office should not have made this request at this point in time.
This results from a current statement by the Mainz State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information.
If - as in many cases - the driver of the vehicle has not yet been determined and the authorities therefore first send a hearing sheet to the vehicle owner, such a request in Flensburg is dispensable: This "automated query process" is "not yet necessary", he said Regional Data Protection Officer.
That might sound like formalism.
But it had concrete consequences - in favor of the Golf driver.
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Warning due to traffic offense (symbol): Invalid data request
Photo: Angelika Warmuth / dpa
His lawyer, the traffic law specialist Alexander Gratz from Bous in Saarland, asserted the data protection violation in court.
At the hearing, the judge was ready to reduce the fine to 55 euros.
The point in Flensburg was thus omitted.
Such data protection violations "often" lead, according to traffic law attorney Gratz, "that the fine is reduced and points or driving bans are lifted."
Occasionally, proceedings are even dropped by the courts.
This means: If someone is flashed in Germany, the vehicle owner is usually heard in writing about the process.
If the authority has already requested further data about him in an inadmissible manner, he can get off lightly by referring to it.
Comparable cases from other countries
The fact that it turned out in the course of the proceedings that the man was actually the driver did nothing to change the data protection violation.
The fines office must find out "whether the person concerned has a 'clean slate' or not," because the fines are often increased for repeat offenders, says lawyer Gratz.
But it is problematic if the query is made too early.
And that happens quite often, says Gratz.
Comparable procedures of the law firm were checked on a random basis, and in the "overwhelming majority" data were requested from the driver's license register "at the same time as or immediately after the hearing sheet was sent," although in these cases it was not yet clear who was driving at all " .
In addition to proceedings from Rhineland-Palatinate, this also applies to proceedings from Saarland, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
more on the subject
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The data protection officer of the State of Hesse has now also stated in a further case, at the request of the lawyer, "that this data collection may only take place if it is necessary in the procedure".
The Hessian data protection officer now wants to check whether this was an individual case "or whether a basic procedure was used".
His colleague from Rhineland-Palatinate has formally objected to the procedure of the fines office to the Ministry of the Interior of the state.
It has already reacted: The previously automated query process, "which was also carried out for people who were not certain as drivers at the time of the query," will be ended, the ministry said.
Instead, the process is now "initiated manually by the clerk in accordance with the legal requirements."
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