London pollution & ULEZ

More trouble for ULEZ. TFL are being sued for many millions over data protection breaches. TFL apparently used a parking company to illegally obtain EU driver details and send out fines. Including to drivers of compliant cars and even cars miss categorised as lorries lol

This on top of having to replace the constantly destroyed cameras is going to run the scheme in to the ground (hopefully).
 
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sounds like there should be a legitimate way for UK and EU to each access driver details for these civil offences, to fine them ..
or alternatively, can they impound such vehicles if they are later seen in London, with unpaid fees, or even stop them at the border. - brexit's fault.
 
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Nasher said:
More trouble for ULEZ. TFL are being sued for many millions over data protection breaches. TFL apparently used a parking company to illegally obtain EU driver details and send out fines. Including to drivers of compliant cars and even cars miss categorised as lorries lol

This on top of having to replace the constantly destroyed cameras is going to run the scheme in to the ground (hopefully).
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www.standard.co.uk

What you need to know about the Ulez Blade Runners as Girl, 6, injured in crash

One member of the Blade Runners told MailOnline last year that he had stolen 34 Ulez cameras
www.standard.co.uk www.standard.co.uk

and prosecutions have already started against other `bladerunners` https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...age-vandalism-ulez-camera-bromley-london-tfl/
 
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Cosimo said:
The EU smogheads have not won yet.

The full story is here:

www.theguardian.com

Hundreds of thousands of EU citizens ‘wrongly fined for driving in London Ulez’

Exclusive: EU states accuse TfL of huge data breach over clean air zone penalties, with many given to compliant vehicles
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

So Brexit is working... ;)
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The article makes the point that the EU drivers sometimes had ulez compliant vehicles the issue being the tfl assumes they don't as they don't have access to that information.

So those would be more correctly called EU "antismog"heads.

Describing Brexit breaking things as "working" seems apt.
 
It’s not really any different when going the other way.

When you go over the the mainland you have to manually register your U.K. car with all the different ULEZ zones you may encounter or you get fined.

Some of them you have to pay a fee (France) for a little sticker to put in your windscreen.

In Belgium I had to register with two different schemes in the same tiny country. One of which I had to upload a copy of my V5 and it seems to get checked manually as it took a few days to come back as fine.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
When you go over the the mainland you have to manually register your U.K. car with all the different ULEZ zones you may encounter or you get fined.

In Belgium I had to register with two different schemes in the same tiny country. One of which I had to upload a copy of my V5 and it seems to get checked manually as it took a few days to come back as fine.
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It's not even a Brexit thing there; Belgium will fine you even if you have a German registered car and they have access to the make/model/year and could just look it up in the same database they use for their native drivers.

Belgians are dicks, basically.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
It’s not really any different when going the other way.

When you go over the the mainland you have to manually register your U.K. car with all the different ULEZ zones you may encounter or you get fined.

Some of them you have to pay a fee (France) for a little sticker to put in your windscreen.

In Belgium I had to register with two different schemes in the same tiny country. One of which I had to upload a copy of my V5 and it seems to get checked manually as it took a few days to come back as fine.
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Exactly. I have my car registered in the French Crit’air system so I can drive through the many clean air zones they have.
 
Mr Jack said:
It's not even a Brexit thing there; Belgium will fine you even if you have a German registered car and they have access to the make/model/year and could just look it up in the same database they use for their native drivers.

Belgians are dicks, basically.
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Do their native drivers need to manually register too? If they're treating the Germans differently then that seems a bit iffy within the EU.
 
Nasher said:
But are they getting driver details in a legit way on the other side of you don't pay it?
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No idea, but it seems the issue isn’t TfL’s if you actually read the article.

The data breaches are in fact the overseers vehicle registers disclosing information when they shouldn’t. TfL (and their contractors) can ask for the data, it’s wholly the responsibility of the person disclosing to make sure they are doing so lawfully. Now if TFL’s contractors are making false representations (aka fraud), that’s a different kettle of fish but that still doesn’t absolve the person disclosing of taking reasonable steps to establish if the disclosure is lawful.

Likewise it’s difficult to sympathise with said drivers for getting fines when they don’t register their vehicles. We would be due fines if we didn’t register our vehicles in their schemes.


dowie said:
Do their native drivers need to manually register too? If they're treating the Germans differently then that seems a bit iffy within the EU.
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Some yes, some no. It depends if they have you on their database or not. The French system you need to pay for a sticker so everyone has to register and get one.
 
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in paris police could stop you if you don't have a crit air and give on the spot fine, so may not need your details.
..also they don't have a inner congestion zone, like london, where almost everyone pays, not sure if tfl are imposing fines there too.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
Some yes, some no. It depends if they have you on their database or not. The French system you need to pay for a sticker so everyone has to register and get one.
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In the scenario I'm asking about he said that they're accessible via the same database? "Belgium will fine you even if you have a German registered car and they have access to the make/model/year and could just look it up in the same database they use for their native drivers."
 
dowie said:
Do their native drivers need to manually register too? If they're treating the Germans differently then that seems a bit iffy within the EU.
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No idea. But, in any case, car registration/etc. is a mostly devolved matter as are congestion zones so, AFAIK, there isn't any EU angle. I only know they have the details they'd need because it appears on the fine letter they send.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
No idea, but it seems the issue isn’t TfL’s if you actually read the article.

The data breaches are in fact the overseers vehicle registers disclosing information when they shouldn’t. TfL (and their contractors) can ask for the data, it’s wholly the responsibility of the person disclosing to make sure they are doing so lawfully. Now if TFL’s contractors are making false representations (aka fraud), that’s a different kettle of fish but that still doesn’t absolve the person disclosing of taking reasonable steps to establish if the disclosure is lawful.

Likewise it’s difficult to sympathise with said drivers for getting fines when they don’t register their vehicles. We would be due fines if we didn’t register our vehicles in their schemes.




Some yes, some no. It depends if they have you on their database or not. The French system you need to pay for a sticker so everyone has to register and get one.
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But TFL is still at fault because they are holding the data, plus it's being used wrongly which is also an offence. They should have made sure it was being acquired legally.
 
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I'm guessing here the process went like this:

TFL to EU transport authorities: "Please can we have data on these drivers?"
EU transport authorities: "Nein/Non. Brexit!"
TFL to Euro Parking (who probably already has access to the database guessing by their name): "Please can you get their details?"
Euro Parking: "Ja/Oui"

If that's the case then both TFL and Euro Parking are at fault.
 
Khan might attract some adverse publicity if he was seen adopting a French policy.... haven't looked up what revenue he has from parking.

PARIS, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Paris holds a referendum on Sunday asking Parisians whether the city should impose a parking surcharge on large SUVs, as the French capital pushes on with its multi-year plan to become a fully bikeable city.
Sunday's referendum, which comes less than a year after city residents voted last year to ban e-scooters, aims to triple the parking fees for cars of 1.6 tonnes and more to 18 euros ($19.4) per hour, to discourage "bulky, polluting" cars, City Hall said.

The new tariff would also apply to electric cars of 2 tonnes and more.
"Heavier, more dangerous, more polluting... SUVs are an environmental disaster," Emmanuel Gregoire, the deputy mayor of Paris said on X.
Under Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo, the streets of Paris have been transformed, with 84 km of cycle lanes being created since 2020 and a 71% jump in bike usage between the end of the COVID-19 lockdowns and 2023, according to City Hall figures.
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e: in retrospect - related - Nation’s guardrail system can’t handle heavy electric vehicles, crash tests show
 
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