Privacy Laws !

Over recent decades the privacy laws have encroached on what should be publicly available information as laws have been passed to shield us from intrusion. In fact in some cases they simply make it impossible to exercise our legal rights and prevent us from gaining redress from what amounts to a crime.

When we have legally parked our car in a street and we observe another motorist crash into it while reverse parking, we may observe the registered number but if it speeds away we can not learn the name and address of that vehicles owner by contacting the police.   The police are preventing from releasing that information by the privacy laws.

If we conduct our own research and discover that vehicle in a repair yard, awaiting rectification of the damage it sustained in the collision, the repair proprietor is unable to release the owner details to us by those same privacy laws, and yet a law has been broken when damage occurred and the erring driver failed to exchange license details and insurance information.

The police may investigate our complaint and even lay a charge against the driver but those same privacy laws prevent us gaining that information from the courts.  In a technical sense, all those who have that information and refuse to divulge it are aiding and abetting a crime.

Any motor vehicle is a mobile mass of metal capable of delivering damage or death if it comes into violent contact with another road user.  The law requires that it be identified by a registration plate on which is affixed a number and to be legally driven on a public street it should have current registration which includes indemnity for injury to others.  We call that " Green slip " cover.  Whether it is covered for property damage is optional.

It seems farcial that a veil of secrecy is imposed to cover the ownership of something that has mobility and is therefore capable of escaping the scene of a law breach but can be identified by that number which is applicable to just that one individual vehicle. The police and public agencies are empowered to stop the vehicle and ascertain the identity of the driver for the purposed of issuing a fine for law breaches and may even impound it for serious offences, but its victims are specifically prevented from learning the identities of the driver and the owner to pursue compensation for loss or damage through the courts.

This should be public information, freely available and accessible by simply using the internet for a search of public records.  It will require a law change to bring this type of information back into the public arena.