Sacked, the cab driver who secretly filmed passengers' confessions then posted them on YouTube
By Daily Mail Reporter
8th November 2010
A taxi driver has been sacked after secretly filming the drunken confessions of passengers and posting them on YouTube.
Colin Hedley used a CCTV camera - installed in his cab for security - to capture blabbering passengers' confessions.
He posted four videos on the internet along with a note explaining his aim to expose 'the kind of people that use our city nightlife to cheat and be unfaithful to their partners'.
He revealed he had 'recorded the punters using taxis on a typical weekend in and around Nottingham city centre.
He added: 'Trust, loyalty, honesty, effort seem to be words of the past these days. Is there nobody out there that we can trust anymore?'
One of the videos, filmed on August 28, shows a woman discussing her previous relationship and her fears her sister-in-law might be having an affair.
She talks about the behaviour of her sister-in-law, who she claims to have caught kissing another man.
She tells the driver: 'She looked at me and said "I know him". Well you know my brother as well, you have been with him for 15 years'.'
He replies: 'She sounds like a bad one.' They then go on to discuss their own previous relationships.
The woman tells the driver: 'I don't think I have got a heart left. I had someone cheat on me after 10 years. It broke my heart.'
As she steps out, the woman tells him: 'Thank you for a lovely ride home and a nice conversation.'
In another video the driver gives four passengers a lift to Sherwood, Nottingham. At one point he asks one of the passengers, who is from Malawi: 'How can you talk that fast? It is sending me bonkers.'
Another video is described by him as showing 'bunch of toerags going Netherfield'. He gets into an argument with his four passengers, all young men, who hurl abuse at him after he tells them to get out of his cab.
On YouTube, Mr Hedley claims he is employed by Nottingham taxi company Central Cars, but the company insist he stopped working for them around July this year.
A spokesperson said his exit was not related to filming passengers, and that the videos on YouTube were recorded after he left.
Colin had been working for DG Cars since then, and company director Ian Pole said 95 per cent of the cars have CCTV 'as a matter of course'.
After hearing about the videos the company stopped using him as a driver. Mr Pole said: 'I have to ensure things are done properly - this is the only action I could take.
'He was quite sorry about the situation, he has done something a little bit silly. I genuinely think he has not done this in a malicious way.'
Donna Short, from the National Private Hire Association, branded his behaviour 'disgusting'.
She said: 'The CCTV material is supposed to be encrypted. It is not supposed to be accessible to anyone except the council and police, so how he got away with this is a mystery.'
The Data Protection Act makes it against the law to publish images of identifiable people on the internet without permission for others to see.
Colin Hedley is no stranger to posting footage on the internet. Last year he filmed a man being stun-gunned by police in Nottingham city centre.
The mobile phone footage posted on YouTube was picked up by national television news and re-shown across the country.
An Independent Police Complaints Commission report later ruled that the use of the stun gun on the man was 'lawful and proportionate'.
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