According to multiple French media reports, the the driver was arrested in Oullins, south of Lyon, for having used a GPS jammer to mask the location of his lorry.
The police were sent to track down the driver after the National Radio Frequency Agency (ANFR) launched an investigation due to Lyon Airport suffering disruption to some of its GPS signals. Using special equipment to find signal disruptions, the trucker was arrested last Monday.
Such jamming devices are banned in France due to the disturbances they can create around them.
The jammers can simply be powered via the cigarette lighter socket of a vehicle, and work by broadcasting a background noise that covers the frequencies emitted by the satellites and picked up by the GPS.
The problem for the driver is that such devices operate over a distance of 1 to 5 kilometers, thus creating a bubble much larger than his vehicle itself. When driving to or near an airport, the disruption can be picked up by authorities, who will naturally look to investigate. This is precisely what happened in this case.
The Lyon-based driver reportedly told the police that he wanted to escape the supervision of his boss. This is a frequent use-case, according to Gilles Brégant of the National Radio Frequency Agency.
Photo: Benoît Prieur, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons