Passenger moons speed camera

A car passenger is in trouble for mooning a speed camera in the UK. It's interesting that the car was not speeding, but the authorities had a photo of the car anyway.

Police may take action against the man for public order offences and not wearing a seat belt.
Officers have the registration of the car, which was not breaking the speed limit, and intend to contact its owner.

It is understood the driver will not face prosecution as no driving offence was being committed.

Jeremy Forsberg, of the Northumbria Safer Roads Initiative, said: "This behaviour is simply ridiculous - it's clear what he was thinking with what he had on show.

"Not only is it disrespectful, but distasteful and offensive, particularly to children who may have been exposed to this nonsense.

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Gilbert Wham

Every child I know, and I mean every one, would find this fucking hilarious. So would all the kids you, or anyone else on the planet knows. Because waving your bum at figures of authority is, quite clearly, funny. And kids know funny.
Lord Peter

If I saw the picture with no explanation, I would have assumed it was an airbag going off.

@ #23 The picture wasn’t taken by an automatic camera; it was taken by a camera being held by a police officer (who, presumably, was the actual moonee).
markhaas

I wonder what would happen if you merely held up a life-size photo of someone mooning the speed camera, or some other “offensive” behavior. Probably would look real to the camera anyway. What charge would the police use then?
Chris S

Anyone checked to make sure this isn’t a HOV dummy?
geekazoid

It baffles me why they would give this rather juvenile incident any press. And the whole “children might have seen a bum” angle is ridiculous.

Mooning people from your buddy’s car is a pretty banal and adolescent male impulse. I’m pretty sure I did this in high school a few times. Certainly witnessed it in cars and school buses on countless occasions. This is a prime example of testosterone and impaired judgment – i.e. boys will be boys. No big whoop.

@18: Your comment reminds me of a buddy of mine, Ronnie, who used to keep a mannequin (dressed & wigged) in the passenger seat of his Honda CRV so he could use the HOV lane on his morning commute.

I suggested he modify it such that one arm was hinged and attach a pulley and line so he could make her “salute” the other drivers as he passed them by.
Bottlekid

Normally, one would expect to see that on the driver’s side of a BMW.
bolamig

So nobody saw anything wrong with cops distributing a voyeuristic photo of a guy’s private parts to the news media for a laugh? We’ve got to get the EFF working on important privacy matters. I kid. Not.

Cameras will become ubiquitous… there’s already at least two that record me everytime I go outside my apartment. The important work that EFF does is to make sure there are consequences when the technology is misused.
mikelotus

i thought this thing only took pictures if you were speeding? at least that is how it works in washington, dc. why is every care having picture taken and what are they using to store all that data and how long do they hold onto the data?
scottfree

#3

Exactly.

I for one object to Jeremy Forsbergs depiction of the people who watch speed cameras as children. Just because they are stuck with a shite job does not mean that their intelligence is any less than the average adult.

Either that or I call for Jeremy to be subpoenaed in an investigation into child labour in the UK.

In any event, a clarification is in order.

Scottfree
Treasurer
International You Not Use Words Wrong Committee
sonny p fontaine

the ass is clearly photoshopped
padster123

“Not only is it disrespectful, but distasteful and offensive, particularly to children who may have been exposed to this nonsense.”

Fool. A child would laugh. Children don’t find anything much in language “offensive”. Only a Daily Mail reading pompous ass would say something like that.
Piet Stoaling

I’m sorry, that is possible one of the funniest things I have seen on a while. Why do the authorities bother! Surely they should just look at it, giggle and post the image on the office wall…!
Matthew Walton

Well actually the camera was probably operated by a civilian member of the traffic safety partnership – the police have got too many forms to fill in to be sitting in a van operating cameras (they do it sometimes, but not very often).

But yes, it seems it was a manual camera. The angle, for one thing, is a lot lower than an automatic speed camera’s usual mounting height would give.
StridentLobster

That pasty ass still looks better than a Hummer.
dculberson

The bum is one thing — the unsecured load is another issue entirely.
foop

@#23: But the car was breaking a traffic law. It looks like the passenger wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. This is an offence punishable by a fixed penalty fine of Â£30, or Â£500 if the case goes to court.

But anyway, you’re a bored traffic cop. You see someone’s huge arse approaching. Are you really not going to record it?
BarkingSpider

Perhaps, just perhaps, the car itself was traveling at the speed limit, but the camera picked up the advancing speed of the man’s bum as it approached the windshield–which would necessarily be faster than the car itself.
Kobie

Kids love asses. They’d be laughing more than anyone else.
cobrabay

The A1171 in Cramlington runs past my old school, now called Cramlington Community High School. The road isn’t easily visible from the school, but would be from the bus stops which served the school. I think in my day, once we’d stopped laughing the faster thinking kids would have replied in kind.
Stacyj

Wow, I can’t believe Forsberg actually managed to get a “won’t somebody think of the children!” into his objections … what fun when people present themselves as real-life parodies =P
weatherman

Is public lewdness if there is no “public” around? If a man moons in the forest…
Scuba SM

Hmmm, maybe he’s implying that they use children to monitor the traffic cameras. Though, if the car wasn’t speeding, it means somebody was taking the time to look at every single picture while on the gov’t payroll. Hooray effectual use of tax dollars! Of course, what do I know. They may have already caught 30 terrorists by looking at non-speeding vehicles.
PhiCancri

What will become of the little ones that are harmed psychologically by viewing a stranger’s bare bum? Won’t someone please think of the children?!
foobar

Is the driver to be expected to identify the passenger by his ass?
Tomas

“Uh, I dunno ‘is name , gov’nor, ‘e was jus’ some ass I was haulin’ about…”

:o)
Anselm

Please, think of the children! After all, mooning a speed camera means that your ass will now be splashed across the internet to corrupt innocent little children!
Blackbird

Is the driver to be expected to identify the passenger by his ass?

Wow…what fun! Police line-ups, identifying the ass in court…fun!

I wanna know why, if the driver wasn’t speeding, a pic was taken. Are the photographing EVERY car that passes, and only issuing tickets to those that are speeding? Is the threshold of the camera so low that all cars are photographed? Or…in the tinfoil hat mode, do they have some sort of filter for the images that will pop out pictures of OTHER crimes? Ass-Filters perhaps?

As a legal side note: Does one HAVE to identify his passenger if in fact no crime to the driver has been attributed? If it was a speeding camera, and the driver was not speeding, but they had his picture anyway (illegal?), what crime is there if that photo shouldn’t even exist?

I guess they have to pay for the new CCTV’s some way, so, lets watch ALL the footage and fine people to make money!
Lex10

“It is understood the driver will not face prosecution” Haw!
Bazilisk

That’s hilarious.

As long as the camera was not emotionally disturbed by the lewdness…
Johnny Cat

E’s a bit cheeky, that fellow.
mlennox

As we say in Ireland – he was just having a bit of crack! :)
The Unusual Suspect

If it turns out that the ass in question is under the age of majority, can we charge this Jeremy Forsberg with distributing child porn?

Two can play at that game.
Cowicide

#23 posted by mikelotus , May 6, 2008 1:34 PM

i thought this thing only took pictures if you were speeding? at least that is how it works in washington, dc. why is every care having picture taken and what are they using to store all that data and how long do they hold onto the data

Welp that’s what you get and what you deserve when you record cars that aren’t breaking the speed limit, running a red light, etc. …an ass in your face. With that kind of Orwellian surveillance they are lucky they simply aren’t shooting the Goddamn thing out instead.

They start doing that shit in the states and I, for one, will systematically start destroying those cameras as will many others.

Once again, WHY the fuck were they recording a car that wasn’t breaking any traffic laws?

I hope the mooner countersues the police state.
Santa’s Knee

Thank god this didn’t happen in Boston!

\”Mooninites!!!!”
Kibble

The meeting of the Northumbria Safer Roads Initiative was called to order at 7:03 PM.

The minutes of the previous meeting of the Northumbria Safer Roads Initiative were reviewed and approved.

The chairman asked if there was any new business.

Committeeman Roger Elmwood proposed a motion that the Northumbria Safer Roads Initiative should seek out ways to promote itself as pompous, prudish and buffoonish, and therefore distracted from its original mission.

The motion was seconded. Committeeman Ernest Coker objected to the word “buffoonish” and it was stricken from the proposal, based on his understanding that the word had a vaguely licentious connotation. He suggested that it be replaced by the word “stupidheaded”, but this was rejected on the grounds that it wasn’t a word.

A vote was taken and the proposal was approved by a unanimous vote of 11-0.

Committeeman Elmwood said that he would immediately seek out efficacious means for putting the new resolution into practice.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:11 PM.
kpkpkp

What about the Children? Oh, what will we tell the Children?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

It’s simple:
“The Children” want food, shelter and shoes:
http://www.savethechildren.org/
Paul

For everyone asking why the photo was taken when the driver wasn’t speeding:

According to the article, this was a mobile camera, i.e. manually opperated by a police traffic officer, from within a marked (and normally very visible) van on the side of the road. Therefore the officers would have been able to take the photo when they saw the guy mooning them.