Privacy Policy on Data Processing in the Context of Research, Development, and Test Drives
Controller
Volkswagen of South Africa (Pty) Limited (“VWSA/ we”/”us”) are committed to protecting and respecting any personal information you share with us. This statement applies to Personal Information provided to VWSA, its agents, partners, holding company and affiliates, including but not limited to its Dealer Partners and Volkswagen Financial Services of South Africa.
Collection, processing, and use of your personal data
1. Basic principles
Research, development, enhancement, testing, and validation of vehicles, functions, and systems as well as other services require the use of test vehicles under real environmental and traffic conditions and in dynamic driving situations.
These test drives are carried out with specially marked VWGA test vehicles on public roads as well as on private factory, test, and other sites. During these drives, data recordings are made using sensors, measuring equipment, and video measurement technology.
Inadvertently your personal data (in form of images) may be captured by our vehicles on public roads and as a result processed in connection with the creation and evaluation of data recordings – including the collection, processing, and storage of video recordings and still images – from the vehicle environment.
Potentially, this data processing may affect individuals who are present in the vicinity of one of the marked vehicles during the research, development, or test drives.
The recognition of relevant situations and the subsequent training of the systems and functions is an important part of their ongoing development.
The knowledge gained helps to improve the convenience and user experience as well as product, vehicle, and road safety in order to prevent future traffic accidents.
In the context of research, development and testing processes or downstream processing, persons, vehicles, and other objects are only considered as "objects" in the context of traffic situations and the surroundings, e.g., "pedestrians on the right-hand side of the road." VWGA will not identify individuals in the data sets at any time.
3. Recipients
Within VWGA, only those individuals who require your data for the purposes listed above in section B.2 have access to your personal data.
If VWGA shares the aforementioned personal data with service providers and/or other third parties (e.g., cooperation partners), this is done in compliance with the applicable data protection legislation. For service providers, this is done based on corresponding agreements regarding processing by a processor as per the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).
Service providers (so-called processors) that are used by VWGA and receive personal data include
- Companies of the Volkswagen Group that render services (e.g., development services) for VWGA located in Republic or in the EU/European Economic Area
- Development service providers outside the Volkswagen Group
- Suppliers of safety-relevant advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) components
- Hosting service providers
- IT service providers
These companies are each involved in product development and the evaluation of tests. Further information on the recipients of data from actual drives will be provided by VWGA upon request.
Please use the contact information listed below for this purpose.
Please be aware that not all third countries have a level of data protection that is recognized as commensurate by the European Commission, i.e., the level of data protection is not comparable to that in the EU.
To ensure an adequate level of protection for your personal data, VWGA enters into EU standard contractual clauses with these recipients if there is no adequacy decision for the respective third country by the European Commission or if the data forwarding is not permitted under any other law.
If required based on the applicable data protection laws, additional protective measures (e.g., encryption and additional contractual arrangements) are taken so as to ensure an adequate level of protection for your personal data.
2. Affected data categories and purposes for processing
The following personal data is also collected and processed – depending on the use case – for the purposes of research, development, enhancement, testing, and validation of vehicles, functions, and systems as well as other services (e.g., as part of test drives and usability tests as well as test subject studies):
- Still images and video recordings of other road users (vehicles and persons)
- License plates and lettering on vehicles
- Lettering on stores and street signs and other information in the immediate vicinity of the test vehicles that is recorded using interior and exterior sensors (e.g., video and image data)
4. Legal basis for data processing
Your personal data are only collected, processed, and transmitted for specific purposes, and only if the pertinent legal basis for this exists.
The above described purposes have the following legal basis: VWGA has a legitimate interest in the processing of your personal data for the purposes of research, development, enhancement, testing, and validation of vehicles, functions, and systems as well as other services in order to increase road safety on public roads and to enhance the user experience.
Information on your rights, including your right to object to the processing of your personal data, can be found in section C of this privacy policy.
5. Duration of processing and erasure of personal data
Your personal data is processed exclusively in secure databases.
Unless specific legal reasons exist to the contrary, your personal data is only stored for as long as required for processing purposes. Your personal data will then be deleted or anonymized.
C. Your rights
You can assert the following rights with respect to VWGA at any time, free of charge. The corresponding contact details for asserting your rights can be found in section D.
Further information on exercising your rights as a data subject:
This is a "processing activity which does not require identification" in accordance with POPIA. Apart from the video and image data collected, no other identifying features of the data subject are processed.
The exercise and fulfillment of the rights of data subjects therefore— depending on the individual case—will often require further information from the data subject, in particular information on the place and time at which they may be affected by the data processing (i.e., information on when and where you were specifically in the vicinity of a marked vehicle). This additional information may be required in order to determine whether a particular individual is affected by the data processing and in order to be able to actually fulfill the rights mentioned below.
Right of access: You have the right to receive from us information regarding the processing of your personal data.
Right to rectification: You have the right to request immediate correction of incorrect or incomplete details of your personal data that we have stored.
Right to deletion: You have the right to request deletion of your personal data, if the requirements in POPIA are met. Accordingly, for example, you can request deletion of your personal data if this data is no longer required for the purposes for which it was collected. You can also request deletion if we process your personal data on the basis of your consent and you withdraw this consent
Right to restriction of processing: You have the right to request a restriction of the processing of your personal data, if the requirements in POPIA are fulfilled. This may be the case, for example, if you contest the accuracy of your personal data. In such cases, you can request that processing be restricted for the duration of the review concerning the accuracy of the personal data.
Right to object: You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data in the following cases:
- If the processing is for direct marketing purposes (including profiling for direct marketing purposes).
- If the processing (including profiling) has one of the following legal bases:
- The processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in POPIA.
- Processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by us or by a third party. In the case of such objection, we ask that you share with us your reasons for objecting to data processing. If you object, we will no longer process your data unless we can verify compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override your interests, rights and freedoms, or the processing serves the establishment, exercise, or defense
Right to lodge a complaint: You also have the right to lodge a complaint about our processing of your data with a supervisory authority such as the:
Information Regulator
JD House, 27 Stiemens Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg 2001
Enquiries@inforegulator.org.za
D. Contacts
Contacts for asserting your rights
The contact person for exercising your rights and further information can be found at the following
info.officer@vwsa.co.za
Chief Data protection officer
If you have any Data protection concerns, please contact our Data Protection Officer:
Chief Data Protection Officer
103 Algoa Road, Alexander Park Industrial, Kariega, 6229.
info.officer@vwsa.co.za