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Texting While Driving Has A Different Meaning in Finland

by Darla Mack

August 31, 2007 at 11:57 pm · Filed under Mobile Etiquette, Mobile messaging 2.0, SMS

Recently while in Helsinki I came across something interesting. Let me start by explaining how this happened.

I was paying a visit to Nokia HQ and in the parking garage I came across a pink car. Out of the excitement I can’t quite recall what model it was. I asked my host if he knew who drove the car and he laughed and said no. I later found out from Phil Schwarzmann of Finland for Thought that all I had to do was send an SMS with the license plate number to a specific short code and I would get the owner’s info back in an sms. My first thought was, “is this legal”?

Being a native New Yorker and encountering many traffic situations (none including accidents or being ticketed), I thought along the lines of how safe would this be in the US. Apparently in Finland, privacy isn’t well guarded. The truth of the matter is, that lets say you accidentally cut someone off in traffic. All they would have to do was SMS your plate number, hunt you down and get revenge. This definately wouldn’t sit well in the US.

Could there be a positive side to this? I’m left wondering just how beneficial this type of information grabbing could be.

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3 Comments »

  driver wrote @ September 1st, 2007 at 7:43 am

Well… people tend to drive more responsibly when they know that they might be “hunt down” for doing something idiotic.

  Darla Mack wrote @ September 1st, 2007 at 12:41 pm

I guess you have a point there. But it still sounds scary to have that option just readily available.

  J.Lahti wrote @ September 3rd, 2007 at 8:15 am

The service provides only the name of the car owner and the name of the town that is the owner’s registered residence. The owner can also ask this information not to be disclosed. From a Finnish perspective this is similar to the local practise regarding phone directory services: if you can get someone’s phone number, you can get their phonebook entry information, unless the owner has requested it not to be listed.

This information can be also obtained by visiting the local Department of Motor Vehicles, although that is more of a hassle. I.e. if a raving maniac wants to get the information, they can do it without the SMS service. (Or they can get the information over the Internet, but that is more expensive - you have to pay through the DMV on-line shop…)

The SMS service works using premium rate SMS at 1.5 euros per query, i.e. doing lots of queries out of idle will be expensive. SInce it is billed, the records about executed queries are likely to be retained for a while so that the Finnish DMV will know that they got their money from the mobile operator(s). The police most likely will be able to access them if somebody ends up beaten by a person berating their poor driving skills.

If a careless driver splashes the contents of a dirty puddle of water all over a pedestrian waiting at an intersection, the police will not bother to hunt down the driver so that the muddy pedestrian can sue him over the dry-cleaning bill. It is comforting to know that you have the means to ask for reparations yourself without having to spend half a day to visit the DMV.

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