Dashcams. Who uses them?

[TW]Fox;26491309 said:
And frankly even if she had the damage from her literally merging into the side of you, plus the witnesses behind you, would have been sufficient that this wouldn't have gone 50/50?
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You place a lot of faith in other people Fox, I know several people who have had accidents where there have been plenty of witnesses but nobody wanted to hang around and get involved, or where the responsible party simply drove off.

If, in the event of an accident, the other driver or his passengers start getting aggressive and it turns into a slanging match you won't get many strangers offering to help you out, if their other option is to simply carry on driving or slink off to avoid further confrontation.

I know a person who had their car doors kicked in by the other party immediately after a minor accident (she ran in the back of their car after it started to pull out at a roundabout then stopped again), she actually locked herself in her own car because she feared for her safety that much, and called 999 until the police arrived due to the threatening behaviour of the other party.

Now a dashcam may have implicated her in the accident but this nutter would not have got away with his overly aggressive behaviour either (he later denied all knowledge and said that her car must have been damaged beforehand, which the police somehow believed).

I have personally also witnessed a car run into the back of another, and the second car driver (the one actually responsible for the accident) got out and ended up punching the other driver through the window.

Now I got involved in that one, as did the police, but there's no guarantee that strangers will do the right thing, either by stopping and offering to act as a witness for insurance purposes, or by behaving in a sensible or honest way if involved in an accident.

You can say 'it will probably never happen', sure, hopefully it doesn't, but if it does then a camera recording some of what goes on may help you later.
 
No because a head camera would be constantly annoying, get in the way and look absolutely stupid, where as a dashcam is a 'fit once and ignore forever after' item that is not touched or really noticeable through day to use. They are also cheap, I could not advocate spending £300 on the latest blackvue or whatever, but given how little a half decent one costs, why not.

Any more daft questions? :)
 
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A family member of mine was involved in a hit and run accident a couple of years back.

Small painted roundabout, and some jerk off in white van ploughed straight through it and smashed into her, then drove off. She had right of way, completely his fault, maybe drunk or uninsured, or just freaked out.

Got the police involved, they tried to find him, but couldn't.

I'd have loved for her to have had a dash cam even if there was a chance it could have grabbed the plates. It screwed her up royally for a long time after that, took a while for her to get comfortably driving again even though she wasn't at fault. Cost her a load of money too to get everything fixed.

You can be the best driver in the world and things will happen that you can't anticipate. If a £50 camera that isn't hard to install can help ease the headache, heartache and hassle that goes with the aftermath of an accident then it's worth it for a lot of people. At least the people who aren't worried about incriminating themselves :rolleyes: If it's your fault, just deal with the consequences.
 
[TW]Fox;26489619 said:
Except the scams that everyone thinks are rife involve you crashing into them. People seem to have lost all sense of perspective. Whilst some are fairly elaborate they are also fairly rare, more commonly it's just morons taking advantage of those following the car in front too closely or not looking before pulling away after the car in front does. There are millions and millions of cars driving every day yet only a handful of totally unavoidable accidents so..
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I was really playing devil's advocate - but if people feel it gives them peace of mind then I don't see any harm in installing them, they may well capture something indirectly, or in the rare occasion something happens to them they'll have the evidence. I see there being little harm in getting those.

I use a camera if I go for a drive along some cool roads - because I think it's fun. :)
 
Thinking about how fast modern CPUs are (and with AES hardware acceleration in the latest Intels/SPARCs/ARMs), I wonder if it would be possible for a dash cam to encrypt the video files in real time? The police could take the camera & memory card… but the decryption key could be 'forgotten'.
 
Jez said:
In the heat of the moment at the scene of an accident where it was your fault but there is a chance you can fight it, you might not be thinking as clearly as you are right now.

The chances of that outweigh the massively slim chance that i fall victim to a scam for me....
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Tbh, if you hit someone and it's your fault then you should compensate the other party and not try and get out of it.

I don't have one myself but would consider one for the future. Irish insurance companies are awful and take years to settle any claim so anything that could speed it up would be beneficial, in addition to the fact that I know a couple of people who've had serious hassle with no-fault claims turning into fault claims.
 
[TW]Fox;26491309 said:
But you are a decent driver - you have good anticipatory skills so the end result of this was you being irritated by a muppet and nothing more. In this scenario the video has provided zero benefit at all.

But she didnt catch you. And frankly even if she had the damage from her literally merging into the side of you, plus the witnesses behind you, would have been sufficient that this wouldn't have gone 50/50?
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sovietspybob said:
Really? I've known quite a lot which were clearly one parties fault yet after the accident they change their story and it ends up going 50/50 as the insurance companies just don't want to fight it.
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Indeed, i lost out completely which is why I have a Dashcam.

Rush hour, NSL doing about 50mph , Scumbag in van pulled across in front of me entering a farm, had to swerve to avoid hitting him and cars behind him in coming in opposite direction.

Ended up on grass verge part in bush with front bumper etc smashed. How nothing else broke i'll never know. This was a PUG 306 Diesel

Not one person stopped to offer assistance or be a witness, not the other cars i barely missed had i not managed to hit the opposite verge etc, not the cars behind me.

Scumbag refused to give insurance details ( Police showed no interest) and then lied through his teeth saying his car was parked at the side of the road ... on a bend at night on an unlight NSL, as you do ! and that he had no idea there'd been an accident.

Had i hit him or the other cars there'd have been an almighty mess and both us plus other cars would have been dragged in and badly hurt, so no i wont trust in people to be witnesses or do the right thing.
 
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Jez said:
In the heat of the moment at the scene of an accident where it was your fault but there is a chance you can fight it, you might not be thinking as clearly as you are right now.

The chances of that outweigh the massively slim chance that i fall victim to a scam for me....
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Problem is if I was clearly at fault then I'd admit I was at fault. Not at the scene obviously as that goes against the terms of your insurance but I would put my hands up and say to my insurer that I stuffed up. Maybe I'm too honest.

I'm not actually worried about insurance scams either. The reason I have one is this crazy situation where by people who are clearly at fault lie through their teeth to try and pass the liability on. My mother in law T-boned a car that pulled out of their drive (on a NSL road) directly in front of them. Over six months later it was still being argued with the insurance companies pushing for a 50/50 liability. It was only a stone wall "I am not accepting any liability and I'll see you in court if I have to" that finally got the insurance companies to realise the bleeding obvious that they weren't at fault.

As for questionable driving... maybe I'm getting old and boring but at worst my driving is 'spirited' these days and I wouldn't have a problem with the powers that be seeing the footage really.
 
if you get one it has to be a top notch one that is wired correctly through the roof lining so that it is constantly charged when the engine is running.

Also it needs to start recording when you start the car and also be smart enough to know which clips to archive.

I was thinking of getting one but I wouldn't be arsed to charge/press start record on each and every journey and knowing my luck the one time I forget I'll have a collision.

The requirements made it too expensive for me.
 
Golf1.6 said:
if you get one it has to be a top notch one that is wired correctly through the roof lining so that it is constantly charged when the engine is running.

Also it needs to start recording when you start the car and also be smart enough to know which clips to archive.

I was thinking of getting one but I wouldn't be arsed to charge/press start record on each and every journey and knowing my luck the one time I forget I'll have a collision.

The requirements made it too expensive for me.
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Both my cheap ebay ones do everything you mentioned.
 
[TW]Fox;26491177 said:
It could happen to me tomorrow - I accept that - but even if it did, I would average one occurrence every 13 years and 150-170k miles. Not even worth thinking about, surely, let alone rigging up video equipment to record everything. It's massively disproportional to the risk. You could get hit by a car crossing the road tommorrow, do you wear an inflatable safety suit just incase?

You wouldnt be laughing at this suggestion if you'd ever been hit by a car crossing the road, etc etc.

You'd probably be better served by fixing the same video kit outside your front door incase you get burgled, I'd imagine it's statistically more likely!



I don't have a 'problem', I have an 'opinion' and this is a discussion forum :)
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I agree with what you've said. Its just technology for technologys sake. I drive in and around BRistol daily, havent had the need for it in the 4 years of doing so.. If i were cycling into and around Bris or any other large city id probably plump for one. Surely you'd need two in a car also as they dont cover all angles of attack, practical?
 
At college I was present in a collision involving my mate (driving his car) and the car behind tailgating and went into the back of us. Unfortunately, I lost all faith in humanity here, as my mate had a Z3, and the 3 separate witnesses all said that he was at fault. Which he wasn't.
It was my opinion that as they were all green-eyed idiots they were envious of his car, so just simply said he was speeding/at fault as he fit the car + age-range to make it believable.

What actually happened was we approached a roundabout, and the car behind us did not stop, whereas we did, due to there being a dog on the road.

Footage would have hopefully shown the dog on the road, and hopefully the fact we were stationary and didn't just slam on the brakes (and weren't driving dangerously prior to this).

The guy in the car behind us, was a total thug and had 2 thug-mates with him, and all got out the car and stormed over to us. I don't scare easily but this guy and his buddies were very intimidating to my 17yr old self. It turned into a blame game, where they refused to give details. We phoned Police, before they turned up then the other people were almost getting physical with threats etc. The two mates of the driver walked off after a few minutes and just left the driver by himself who came up with some tale about us speeding and slamming the brakes on deliberately.
 
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Most cars I have seen with obvious cameras seem to be driven in a way that I would say is confrontational, I.E someone pulls out on them or tries to edge out then the camera car making a big display of what has happened by stamping on the brakes stopping close to the car whilst the driver gesticulates frantically in the direction of their rear view mirror.

Obviously this is not the case for all car drivers and is certainly not just limited to then either with miniature size of the cameras and peoples lack of understanding basic physics and sticking them to the sides of bike helmets etc....

IMO they attract a certain type of person, the type of person who if they rode a motorbike it would be a r1200rt in white wearing black leathers a white helmet and a services clerance hivis jacket. You know the ones.
 
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