If there is one thing that annoys me no end, it will be people who use their handphones while they are driving. I have had several scary moments with handphone drivers on the road and one guy even deliberately try to ram me when we horn him due to his car was swaying in and out of lanes as he was talking on the handphone.
So I made myself a promise when I bought my viewcam. If ever I get some good footage of people breaking traffic laws, especially handphone users, I will take the footage to the police and will even be ready to stand as a witness should the offender decide to challenge the summons in court. I took some footage earlier but they were too blurry to be effective.
I finally got some good footage yesterday. The images you see below are screenshots from the video footage. I transferred all the recordings onto DVD and handed it to Polis Trafik this morning, along with a detailed report
Now, before you think this is a smooth-sailing with the police, I have news for you. When I made the report, a few things became apparent :-
1. The police have all the procedures in place to summons a driver who uses a handphone without a handsfree kit. No problems there.
2. But they have absolutely no idea of what is the proper procedure when a member of the public walks into Trafik and ask to be allowed to make a police report based on recorded footage. When I made the request, everyone at Trafik was thrown into confusion. I was made to wait for well over an hour, while the officers were bouncing calls from one superior to another, trying to work out what is the proper procedure.
3. Sometimes I think our police force is a bloody joke....law enforcers who are suppose to enforce the law but don't know how to go about it. Talking to some of the characters in there, you get a perception that a lot of them are not particularly smart, articulate or observant. One of them tried to act smart and said to me that the footage on the Kancil driver might not be sufficient proof for a summons. His reasoning was several :- a). the guy did not have the handphone on his ear; b). if I was questioned by lawyers, it will be difficult for me to establish if the thing the driver was manipulating was actually a handphone and if it was a handphone whether I would be able to identify to handphone color and model. It was at that point that I had a WTF moment with this particular cop and told him to watch the footage carefully again. First, the guy had the handphone on his ear at the beginning of the footage but midway in the recording, he took it off his ear, took his eyes off the road, looked down on the handphone and started punching in the numbers....all the time while the Kancil was moving. That is a fuck*ng summonable offence right there caught on camera, CLEAR AS DAYLIGHT...and this cop with the split-pea IQ tells me the charge may not stick ??!!?? And by the way, why would any Court give a shit whether a witness is able to ID the handphone color and model ? What...you expect me to have eagle-eyes to be able to tell the handphone model number held by a driver in his hand in a moving car ?? Unbelievable stupidity.
4. Anyway, some of the cops agreed this was good enough proof and finally the matter was brought all the way to the DSP (imagine that....every low ranker have no freaking idea and it got referred all the way to the DSP). This particular DSP is a pretty cool and approachable guy. He watched the footage, got convinced, made a brief call to his colleague to discuss, put down the phone and told me definitively they have enough to issue summons. In front of me, he issued instructions to a subordinate to get a printout of the vehicle's info from the database. The drivers will be asked to report to Trafik where they will be shown the footage and then be issued the summons. He took me report, contact number and in turn he gave me his card should we need to maintain contact (if those dickheads decide to challenge the summons in court)
Lastly, I have footage of the girl below whom we followed for over a kilometre. She was driving erratically and changing lanes without signal. When we pulled alongside, it became apparent that she was driving in that crazy posture. Obviously too lazy to even take her hand off the headrest to operate the signal lever. Either that, or maybe she was trying to show everyone how smooth her armpit from the new close-shave Gillette
So I made myself a promise when I bought my viewcam. If ever I get some good footage of people breaking traffic laws, especially handphone users, I will take the footage to the police and will even be ready to stand as a witness should the offender decide to challenge the summons in court. I took some footage earlier but they were too blurry to be effective.
I finally got some good footage yesterday. The images you see below are screenshots from the video footage. I transferred all the recordings onto DVD and handed it to Polis Trafik this morning, along with a detailed report
Now, before you think this is a smooth-sailing with the police, I have news for you. When I made the report, a few things became apparent :-
1. The police have all the procedures in place to summons a driver who uses a handphone without a handsfree kit. No problems there.
2. But they have absolutely no idea of what is the proper procedure when a member of the public walks into Trafik and ask to be allowed to make a police report based on recorded footage. When I made the request, everyone at Trafik was thrown into confusion. I was made to wait for well over an hour, while the officers were bouncing calls from one superior to another, trying to work out what is the proper procedure.
3. Sometimes I think our police force is a bloody joke....law enforcers who are suppose to enforce the law but don't know how to go about it. Talking to some of the characters in there, you get a perception that a lot of them are not particularly smart, articulate or observant. One of them tried to act smart and said to me that the footage on the Kancil driver might not be sufficient proof for a summons. His reasoning was several :- a). the guy did not have the handphone on his ear; b). if I was questioned by lawyers, it will be difficult for me to establish if the thing the driver was manipulating was actually a handphone and if it was a handphone whether I would be able to identify to handphone color and model. It was at that point that I had a WTF moment with this particular cop and told him to watch the footage carefully again. First, the guy had the handphone on his ear at the beginning of the footage but midway in the recording, he took it off his ear, took his eyes off the road, looked down on the handphone and started punching in the numbers....all the time while the Kancil was moving. That is a fuck*ng summonable offence right there caught on camera, CLEAR AS DAYLIGHT...and this cop with the split-pea IQ tells me the charge may not stick ??!!?? And by the way, why would any Court give a shit whether a witness is able to ID the handphone color and model ? What...you expect me to have eagle-eyes to be able to tell the handphone model number held by a driver in his hand in a moving car ?? Unbelievable stupidity.
4. Anyway, some of the cops agreed this was good enough proof and finally the matter was brought all the way to the DSP (imagine that....every low ranker have no freaking idea and it got referred all the way to the DSP). This particular DSP is a pretty cool and approachable guy. He watched the footage, got convinced, made a brief call to his colleague to discuss, put down the phone and told me definitively they have enough to issue summons. In front of me, he issued instructions to a subordinate to get a printout of the vehicle's info from the database. The drivers will be asked to report to Trafik where they will be shown the footage and then be issued the summons. He took me report, contact number and in turn he gave me his card should we need to maintain contact (if those dickheads decide to challenge the summons in court)
Lastly, I have footage of the girl below whom we followed for over a kilometre. She was driving erratically and changing lanes without signal. When we pulled alongside, it became apparent that she was driving in that crazy posture. Obviously too lazy to even take her hand off the headrest to operate the signal lever. Either that, or maybe she was trying to show everyone how smooth her armpit from the new close-shave Gillette
buauahahahaha
