Doctored clip goes viral with false claim it shows 2020 Hong Kong bus incident

This article is more than one year old.
Published on November 3, 2022 at 04:46
3 min read
By AFP Hong Kong

A doctored video has been viewed millions of times in social media posts that falsely claim it shows a dangerous driving incident that led to the apprehension of a Hong Kong bus driver in 2020. In reality, the video was filmed in Japan and has been uploaded to YouTube since at least 2011. It has been digitally sped up and altered to add Cantonese-language audio of screaming passengers.

The video has racked up over five million views after it was shared on Twitter on October 19.

It appears to show a bus driver manoeuvring extremely sharp turns while terrified passengers scream in Cantonese: "Please stop the car!"

"I actually really want to know what happened to the driver afterwards..." the video's simplified-Chinese caption reads.

A screenshot, taken on October 25, 2022, of the misleading post.

The doctored video has circulated since 2020 after a bus driver was arrested in April that year for alleged dangerous driving on Hong Kong's Yuen Long Highway, news organisations HK01 and Cable News reported.

The driver was sentenced to prison for two months and two weeks, a representative for the public relations branch of the Hong Kong police told AFP.

The video resurfaced with the same claim in October 2022 on Weibo, YouTube and the Chinese version of TikTok Douyin.

Hong Kong fact-checking organisation Annie Lab has previously debunked the posts.

The original video was actually filmed in Japan.

It has been manipulated to insert audio taken from genuine footage of the Hong Kong bus incident.

Doctored video

A combination of reverse image and keyword searches on Google found the original video published on YouTube on November 5, 2011.

The video is titled: "Japanese bus driver's technique". The section used in the doctored video starts from the two-minute, 38-second mark and has been sped up.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in one of the false posts (left) and the 2011 YouTube video (right):

A screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (left) and the YouTube video (right).

The location shown in the video corresponds with Google street imagery of a section of Japan's National Route 120 in Nikko -- a mountainous city north of the capital Tokyo.

Below is a screenshot comparison of keyframes from the doctored video (left) and corresponding street imagery on Google Maps (right):

A screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (left) and the Google map street imagery (right).

The audio added to the doctored video was taken from a clip posted on YouTube on April 2, 2020 -- from the 16-second mark onwards.

The 2020 video's traditional-Chinese title reads: "Highway fast and furious, minibus driver almost lost control."

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