CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure

Tram line fall Westbound Princes Street/At Andrew Street

(7 posts)

No tags yet.


  1. Tulyar
    Member

    Saw this report on Twitter from a witness, but no further details.

    Westbound falls will be when a rider moves over into the outside lane approaching Waverley Bridge. My hunch is that such falls will be of the most common type 70% of falls reported in Chris Oliver's study, and very likely with the presence/actions of other road users a key causal factor. The melee if double parking drop-offs for the hotel, Waverley Steps, and Market, plus bus stops AND the regular failed pavement on the carriageway as manhole frames sink and break out from the tarmac provide a high hazard score here.

    The poor transverse profile of the embedded rail and abutting track slab concrete, creating additional deep ridges and cracks, with the poured elastomer joints often sunken, pulled out by buses, and then overfilled when repairs take place, should also be recorded after any crash.

    Bus CCTV in which the victim appears can be requested by the victim up to 30 days after the event under GDPR legislation. I believe that the bus CCTV from the Lothian bus immediately behind the Rabbies mini-bus was a key element in reviewing Zhu Min Soh's fatal crash. Act fast though bus CCTV is not always reliably held by the current on bus systems.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  2. Frenchy
    Member

    Act fast though bus CCTV is not always reliably held by the current on bus systems.

    I believe the disks generally hold around 3 days of footage, and automatically overwrite old footage. So you normally only have a couple of days to let them know you want to see it, so that they can get the disk off the bus when it returns to the depot.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  3. Tulyar
    Member

    This poses a serious conundrum for Edinburgh Council and Transport for Edinburgh under the GDPR legislation, as a person has up to 30 days in which they can exercise their rights to a copy of video or still photographs in which they are recorded. Failure to provide this would appear to be an offence, against which the equivalent of "The dog ate my homework" will not be an acceptable defence.

    Perhaps a question for councillors/transport committee to determine the city's position on?

    My understanding on current on vehicle systems is that 10-14 days is routine capacity, but many now have 4g and WiFi direct feeds available to the bus and tram controllers, as well as daily downloads, when the bus comes in from service.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  4. Frenchy
    Member

    Actually, I haven't gone through this process since GDPR was brought in. They could well store everything for 30 days now.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  5. ejstubbs
    Member

    @Tulyar:

    This poses a serious conundrum for Edinburgh Council and Transport for Edinburgh under the GDPR legislation, as a person has up to 30 days in which they can exercise their rights to a copy of video or still photographs in which they are recorded. Failure to provide this would appear to be an offence, against which the equivalent of "The dog ate my homework" will not be an acceptable defence.

    There is nothing in GDPR that says anything of the sort.

    A data controller has 30 days in which to respond to a data subject access request, but if the data controller's legitimate process is to overwrite data in a shorter time than it took for the data subject to make their access request then that's fine. A data subject access request is basically saying: "give me all the data you have about me". If the data controller had data about the data subject in the past but doesn't have it any more, there is no way they can provide it.

    Hanging on to personal data just in case a data subject comes along with an access request is not a legitimate reason. Data controllers are obliged not to retain personal data for any longer than is needed to satisfy the function for which they collect it. And "just in case" is not a valid reason to hang on to personal data.

    I doubt that Lothian Buses' documented purpose for collecting CCTV images is so as to be able to provide evidence of things happening that are not directly in their interest if people happen to come asking for it. They record CCTV in order to be able to take appropriate action in response to incidents on or involving their buses. They will know if such an incident has occurred so they know when certain CCTV images need to be preserved for longer than the usual overwrite period. They cannot realistically (or legally) cater for the off chance that some random party will come along looking for images of a given location on a given date at some unspecified time in the future.

    GDPR myths seem to be propagating these days the way 'elf'n'safety ones used to.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  6. acsimpson
    Member

    @ejstubbs, They were propagating long before the legislation became law. Almost every mainstream article I read talked about the right to be forgotten. Although such a right might exist in some circumstances it is certainly not a generic right which can be applied to companies you have had dealings with.

    I'm not sure what would happen if I requested data and Lothian buses deleted it after my request. Unless they are responding to requests over weekends then 3 days may be a bit too tight.

    Posted 5 years ago #

  7. ejstubbs
    Member

    This is nothing to do with the right to be forgotten - that's about a data subject's right to have their personal data expunged from the data controller's systems.

    The issue of how long Lothian Buses choose to keep CCTV images is covered by the principle of storage limitation as laid out in GDPR Article 5 paragraph 1(e). The same principle was in the 1988 DPA so its been the law for 30 years. The only reason people are taking it more seriously under GDPR is because the penalties for infractions are so much more severe under the new law.

    Just because a data controller has collected personal data about you absolutely does not mean that they have to hold on to it for longer than needed for the purpose for which they collected it just in case you want to see it after they've finished with it. They are supposed to delete it when they no longer need it.

    You don't have to believe me. I've provided a link to the GDPR text above, and the ICO's web site has lots of guidance and interpretation. My statements are simply based on the GDPR training I received prior to it coming in to force, and my close involvement in my employer's own internal GDPR compliance project as part of which I helped write their new data protection policy including things like their Data Protection Impact Assessment process and their records of processing activities register - all under the supervision and guidance of a GDPR-trained lawyer. Despite that, I accept that it's still possible that I'm mistaken - but I'd need to see authoritative evidence from an independent source to convince me.

    Posted 5 years ago #

RSS feed for this topic

Reply

You must log in to post.


Video embedded using Easy Video Embed plugin