Vlogging twentysomething Gio Latooy is causing a lot of annoyance at D66. If it is difficult to punish his behavior, then there should be a change in the law, according to Jan Paternotte.
Gio Latooy is a kind of parody of a stereotypical vlogger: the vlogging camera is glued to his camera and absolutely everything has to be recorded. He has just broken up with his girlfriend and all those tears are barely visible on the screen of all his followers. A typical example of social media narcissism.
‘Gio is an idiot!’
All that Gio’s vlogging occasionally creates dire situations. He also continues filming in the car. His hands are busier with that camera than with the steering wheel and people talk about that as a shame. If he crashes himself, that is already annoying, but endangering other road users is unacceptable.
There was a lot of fuss about it last week and D66 is so upset about it that faction leader Jan Paternotte is even calling for a change in the law. “Very annoying that his relationship has ended, but it is quite idiotic to sit and vlog while you are driving on the highway with a phone in your hand.”
‘Fine!’
Jan believes that Gio should be fined as soon as possible, he says good morning Netherlands. “It is of course forbidden. I would say: 1.2 million followers… If there is also a police officer among them, can’t we at least ensure that there is a fine?”
Presenter Maaike Timmerman points out the difficulties this entails. Normally it is necessary to catch someone in the act. “Then you have to change the law, because that is not possible yet, is it?” she explains to the politician.
‘Change the law!’
Jan finds that astonishing. “You can give a fine if people are sitting with their phone in their hand?”
Maaike: “Yes, but not if you only saw it in the images.”
Then you should just change the law, says Jan. “Then you have to see if you can’t make that possible, because this is of course extremely dangerous and it is indeed an incredibly bad example if 1.2 million people see that and think: well, apparently that’s fun. That is not good for traffic.”
‘To enforce!’
Maaike: “So the police should also be able to do that if it appears from images on TikTok or YouTube?”
If that is not already possible, it should be made possible, says Jan. “I have seen before that when someone drove extremely fast and filmed it and later posted it online, their driver’s license was confiscated because someone was driving more than 200 kilometers per hour. Then you would say: this must be possible. You have to enforce.”