Boisecar

StormRune

I've been using dash cams for years now but understand your concern. My take is that the most likely cause of an incident involving another car will be the other car's fault, but it can often be difficult to prove that - who ran the light or stop sign for example - it can be a he-said/she-said situation. I don't like letting people walk away without taking responsibility for their actions when serious harm occurs.

It is easy for people to assume that the stereotypical aggressive sports-car driver caused the accident and I don't want to let that assumption cause me to end up with a no-fault or my-fault situation when it just wasn't. If the other driver was at fault (again assuming that is likely going to be the case) I'd like to be able to prove it. Also note that they can't just grab your video without a warrant unless you freely offer it up. Most of the time they won't even know it is there and if it is, was the card even in or the camera turned on.

On the more fun side of things, both my son and I share amusing stupid-driver clips when various incidents get recorded out on the road.

And in both our cases, over the years we have been able to provide video to police in two super-drunk driver crashes showing them swerving out of their lanes or off the road just before the crash, and two other red-light/stop-light running incidents where we weren't involved but had captured video showing an innocent driver taking a bad hit that wasn't their fault. (Actually my son had all but one of these since he logs at least 4x more miles on the road than I do).

HkPlinker

So, a follow up question. What is a good dash cam that is easy to set up, run, replay and is small and out of the way ??

superdog

John Mclane

I'm partial to blackvue, with a nice drop this month (below- I think 10 off with it for both).

https://www.massdrop.com/buy/blackvu...referer=9GNY83

I first installed bc of insurance scammers in TX, now for distracted drivers ignoring stop signs in IL. From the guilt stand point, my cam speed is off, although you can pull it using the dedicated software. I believe a subpoena is required to have access to the files, which are overwritten after a couple of days, if not protected or copied.

As a witness to any situation I would never volunteer a dash cam video without a lawyer involved, simply bc things can go south on unpredictable ways (google a video by a law professor explaining why you should never talk to the police).

rileyracing1

Pass on the dash cam .... Here in Toronto if you leave them in your car its like leaving your wallet on your seat ... Many car windows get smashed for these ...

jimmymoO

Dashcam is a pretty common thing in Asia country. I never had it in my car here in the US prior to my 911T but this time I decided to get it. I've started to hear and seen many stories of people getting hit or hit and run situation, etc.. or even as bad as people getting out of car attempting to bring a fight here in the US. I would say it's worth it. It's like car insurance, you'd be thankful that you have it when you do need it.

In terms of the selection, there are many depending on what you want to achieve. I got Blackvue 900 for it's size and it doesn't intrude the views.

koala

We have one in my wife's minivan and do catch a lot of hilarious stuff. I drive very defensively in that vehicle, so my own behaviour doesn't worry me. Obviously, some of us drive our 911's a bit more spiritedly, and I'd rather not record that

StormRune

Speaking of dash cams and smashed windows... a thief here in Austin broke the side window of a GTS to get to the radar detector, but then left the dash cam that recorded his face in a closeup. Here's the local news report: https://www.kvue.com/article/news/cr.../269-574534223

Answering the which-dash-cam question: I have a ThinkWare F800 currently and it has been the most reliable dash cam I've had. Some of the cheaper ones kept having problems with corrupting the cards and failing to record. This has never been an issue with the ThinkWare plus I like the 1 frame-per-second parking mode option. It also has built-in support for automatic shutoff after a period of time or a certain battery level (configurable from the phone app) plus the ease of transfer via WiFi to my phone without having to get a computer involved.

The newest BlackVue has the highest resolution out there now and is known to be highly reliable as well. If I where buying at this moment I'd problem go with it. It's surprisingly hard to read license plates on cars that aren't really close without the highest possible resolution... just in case that becomes needed (hit and run for example).

If you aren't interested in paying ThinkWare (high) or BlackVue (higher) prices, then there are some other good choices out there as well. An interesting newer option on the market is the Owl Cam, which is the camera that grabbed the video in the report shown above. Here is a still shot of the perp that was grabbed with its interior-facing camera. He was recognized and caught

Bob Z.

There are several threads here for your reading pleasure to get an idea of what others are using. Personally, I would need to have one that is very small without wires or anything else visible other than the camera and I would pay whatever it cost to get the best if it met my criteria but I do not think one exists yet.

Wujohn

This is awesome! Darwin award here? As Bob Z says, lots of threads and lots of opinions on which is best. I looked at Thinkware and Blackvue and ended up with Blackview but I think either choice for a high end camera would be good. A lot of threads also show you how to wire the camera so that nothing is visible and since mine is behind my mirror, I hardly notice it.

Others have commented in different threads that your car records basically everything, so if you get in an accident you will have a black box that tells an investigator how fast you were actually going. A camera will protect you from stupid drivers and idiot thieves that don't know a camera is there (see above). In my case I will also use it to record AX and hopefully soon a track run. Nothing like video-graphic evidence of how bad a driver I am

911mhawk

Have been thinking about the same to document scenarios that are he/she said, and the parking hit and run. There's always the off button for open highway runs.

tgavem

I think OWL cam is the only one that use a SIM card and cell phone connections so it records and sends info to the cloud 24/7. This is great if you street park so you can record people braking into your car or hitting it while parked. Also has a valet setting.
Most other cameras use SD card or internal memory and only uploads while on WiFi or Bluetooth.

vodkag

DO IT!, you be surprised how many people that cant drive on the road...not to mention also scammers that tries to run into your car and say you hit them to scam $$ from you (have been seen here in LA in the SGV area....esp nice cars)

Boisecar