A Sydney driver has been fined $337 after she breached a road rule in an unexpected way.
Sheree Panetta said she copped a $337 fine because her passenger in the front seat was caught having a video-call when they were driving through Catherine Field, NSW.
“Tell your passengers to stay off their phones while you are driving, I got fined because my passenger was on FaceTime,” Panetta wrote on a Facebook post. “Honestly didn’t know that was a thing.”
According to the penalty notice from NSW Police Force, Panetta’s offence was to “drive vehicle with TV/VDU image likely to distract”.
The driver’s post has been shared more than 17,000 times and received over 2,100 comments, most expressing their surprise at the rule.
“How ridiculous,” one wrote.
“That’s such a joke, it’s honestly all profit that’s it,” another added.
“It’s not a legal distraction [if] the driver isn’t looking at the screen. Not to mention it’s a blatant assumption to state the driver was distracted by it and I can almost guarantee there is no proof,” one commented.
Earlier this month, an NSW man was slapped with the same fine after the passenger next to him was caught “playing with laptop” during a drive on the Pacific Highway at Heatherbrae in the Hunter Region.
“Is this real? I cannot believe it,” the man wrote on Facebook. “Unless the passenger was flicking the screen around to you saying ‘look at this’ or it was visible to you then I’d be taking it to court.”
The Roads and Maritime Services website stated that driving a vehicle with TV or VDU (video display units) image visible to the driver attracts a $337 fine and three demerit points, or a $448 fine and four demerit points in a school zone.
The rule does not apply if the display unit is “part of a driver’s aid”, such as a GPS navigation device or a closed-circuit television camera.
Similar rules are also observed in a few other states, including Western Australia and South Australia.
