Until the present time, German motorists had the technical possibility to bypass state sanctions by rewriting recorded violations to third parties for monetary remuneration. Such practice allowed systematic violators of the rules to preserve driving licenses bypassing the operating system of punishments. The new legislative norms completely close this legal gray zone, transferring the fictitious change of responsibility into the category of administrative offenses with high fines both for the drivers themselves and for commercial intermediaries.
The main tool for bypassing the law until now were specialized internet agencies, which for a fee found strawmen ready to take someone else’s guilt upon themselves and accept penalty points into the central register of the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) in Flensburg.
From July, a direct fine of up to 30 thousand euros is introduced for such actions.
If the owner of a car, after the recording of a misdemeanor by an automatic control camera, intentionally indicates incorrect data of the person who was behind the wheel, their actions are qualified as misleading the control authorities. In relation to commercial intermediaries engaged in the professional selection of such fictitious road traffic participants, tough measures of a legal character will also be taken in the future, up to the forced blocking of their network resources.
The largest public organization of motorists in Germany, the ADAC club, completely supported this decision.
The official representative of the association, Alexander Römer, noted that a situation in which citizens with high incomes can legally avoid driving bans completely undermines the preventive function of legislation and creates social inequality on the roads. According to internal statistical surveys of ADAC conducted among road traffic participants, about 50% of drivers who already had penalties considered the purchase of points as a real way out of the situation under the threat of deprivation of rights. Representatives of the club believe that the introduction of tough administrative responsibility and real fines will significantly reduce the readiness of citizens to go for such legal machinations.
In addition to the fight against strawmen, the package of amendments substantially changes a number of other procedural norms of German legislation. In particular, the standard statute of limitations for issuing official notifications on the most common administrative violations (exceeding the established speed, driving through a red light, using a mobile phone at the wheel, non-compliance with a safe distance) is increased from three to six months. This gives the authorized bodies twice as much time for conducting verification measures and establishing the identity of the factual violator. For the preventive and educational effect of a fine is higher when the notification comes promptly, however, the priority of the state in this case is ensuring the inevitability of punishment.
Also, the law officially permits municipalities to use special automatic scanning cars (Scancars), equipped with video cameras, for recording violations of parking rules in an automatic regime.
The system checks state registration plates against the database of permits; however, for the protection of personal data, it is obliged to automatically blur the faces of passers-by and the numbers of vehicles parked without violations.
Additionally, the regulatory act lays a long-term legal basis for the issuance by the Federal Authority of digital driving licenses on smartphones for all documents issued in the form of plastic cards after January 1, 1999.
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