Almost 15 years here! But the difference is there are more people on the roads these days and the majority of them are idiots and more likely to cause a situation that could well benefit having hard evidence of.
Exactly, plus there's been a rise in insurance fraud over the last few yeasr. Cars pulling infront of you, then braking hard so you rear end them. Without video footage it's completely your fault.
This is one of the main reasons I want to get one.
Does anyone have any examples of these being used in an actual legal dispute? I know CCTV in business environments has to meet certain standards to be legally admissible - which these would never satisfy. I get that it's normally just a "he said she said" argument with insurance companies but would be interesting to know if anything would stand up in court.
Also, are insurance companies geared up to accept footage? So if you're filling out the claim form, could you attach the footage and say "see for yourself"?
Absolutely. Some insurance companies actually reduce your premium if you tell them you have one installed.
(Although I read that in Germany they have very strict video recording laws meaning sometimes dash cam footage is inadmissible)
As a bonus, if you do manage to get any decent footage and post it online. There's a chance you could sell the rights to it. I saw a very mediocre clip the other day that some guy posted online of some relatively mundane footage and some video hoster paid him $100 for the rights.
Have a browse through some of the footage here. It's currently filtered by top rated of all time, but you can change the filter to links submitted in the last week or month to get more recent footage.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Roadcam/top/?sort=top&t=all