MADRID, January 19 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The British government has acknowledged a “brief misjudgment” by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has stirred controversy after filming a video for Instagram in which he appears in a car without wearing a seat belt.

“It was a brief misjudgment. The prime minister unbuckled his seatbelt to shoot a short video,” a Downing Street spokesman said Thursday, according to British television Sky News.

According to the government spokesman, Prime Minister Sunak “fully accepts his mistake and apologizes for it”, noting that “everyone should wear a seat belt” when they get in a car.

Sunak was recently criticized for using a Royal Air Force plane to travel to Blackpool instead of taking the train. “Sunak doesn’t know how to wear a seat belt (…) the rail service, the economy, or this country,” Labour scorned.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats have irritated that perhaps Sunak is so used to traveling in private planes that he even “forgot to put his seat belt on in the car”.

“The fact that he violated a basic law is embarrassing and, frankly, dangerous,” lamented Liberal Democrat ‘number two’ Daisy Cooper.

British law provides for a financial penalty of up to 500 pounds – more than 570 euros – for not wearing a seat belt, even with exceptions, such as in Police vehicles, Firefighters or when a medical problem can be justified.

According to data provided by the UK’s Department of Transport, around 30 per cent of people who die in the country in traffic accidents are not wearing seat belts.