The BBC has a story that could be taken as a warning that drivers in the U.K. apparently have no right to keep silent.
The situation described arose when a couple of men challenged tickets for speeding generated by photo-radar devices. British law holds the owner of the vehicle responsible for offenses committed with the vehicle, unless the driver can document the identity of the actual driver, or unless the owner had no reasonable way of knowing who would be driving. So, when these two individuals challenged the speeding tickets, they were asked to disclose the identity of the actual driver, and they took the British equivalent of the Fifth. They were fined, legal processes began, and the case found its way to the EU Court of Human Rights
The BBC reports on the outcome:
Judges acknowledged that both men had been faced compulsion to provide information, but threw out their claim that the right to remain silent and the right not to incriminate oneself are “absolute rights”.
Their judgement noted that people “who choose to keep and drive cars” have implicitly “accepted certain responsibilities” under UK law.
The freedom from self-incrimination is one of those rights that the U.S.’s founding fathers deemed to exist regardless of what a government might claim. It’s a shame that the EU CHR doesn’t agree.