BERLIN, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany ruled on Tuesday that video footage captured by cameras attached to vehicle dashboards will henceforth be permitted as a potential form of legal evidence in traffic accidents in Germany.
The Karlsruhe-based court noted, however, that the verdict did not grant drivers or passengers the right to make continuous and indiscriminate recordings with their dashcams. Due to the continued validity of Europan Union (EU) privacy regulations, which require the explicit consent of individuals to be filmed, the decision of whether or not to allow dashcams footage as a justifiable source of evidence will be made on case by case basis.
The judges hereby approved an appeal of an individual from Saxony-Anhalt who had tried and initially failed to prove his innocence in a traffic accident by submitting dashcam evidence to the administrative and regional courts.
The case was watched closely by traffic experts in light of the previous ambiguity of German law on the subject. Prior to the binding decision by the Federal Constitutional Court on Tuesday, several lower-level courts had arrived at contradictory verdicts on whether or not to permit dashcam evidence.
