Volkswagen fined EUR 1.1 million in Germany for test car's GDPR breaches
Published on 28th Jul 2022
Osborne Clarke data protection law specialists comment on federal state regulator's fine of carmaker for cross-border violation
Lower Saxony’s data regulator has ruled that Volkswagen's trial car for new driver assistance systems infringed four provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The test vehicle with cameras and sensors to measure traffic to carry out error analysis to develop the system was stopped by police in Austria in 2019.
The regulator found that the car signage did not display the data processing properly, data subjects were not informed who undertook the processing and how to exercise their rights, and there was no processing contract or data protection impact assessment.
Osborne Clarke comment
However, Marc Störing, a Partner at Osborne Clarke in Cologne, believes the decision is positive for driver-assistance testing and informing data subjects in line with article 13 of the GDPR.
Neil Weaver, an Associate in Cologne, warns that, although the non-compliance might seem minor compared to other possible GDPR infringements, large companies can be subject to very high GDPR fines.
Marc Störing and Neil Weaver also commented on the decision in a recent Global Data Review article (paywall).
