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Dash Cam - best one?

Paul L said:
Scenario one. You turn into a road and a cyclist is there on the road, headphones on and messing about with phone. Sets off without looking behind and your safe distance is suddenly anything but. It happened.

school zone with 20mph limit, kid runs across road without looking and hits car, heads are turned because driver has just hit car, was he speeding or driving without due care, is kid injured or worse. Police turn up, immediately show attitude to drive, thankfully a bystander says I saw it all, the boy just ran out, it’s amazing the driver managed to swerve away from the kid to minimise the injuries. The police continue, inspect the car, ask about speed, driver says I was below the limit and the kid hit me not the other way around, would you like to see the footage to prove it.

Chap pulls up and parks several feet behind a wheelchair access vehicle. Vehicle reverses before wanting to open the back door then tries to get hostile with the chap for pulling up behind him. Chap sees the conversation is getting nowhere then says I’m calling the police if you don’t back off and they can decide from viewing the footage.

There are countless stories like these.
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You are aware of the changes in the Highway Code? I mean, a kid running across the road near a school, well I never.

None of your scenarios put the driver in danger. It’s a hierarchy of risk with a dose of false equivalence. Should pedestrians have cameras now?

We just need to be a bit more mindful when driving in urban areas.
 
Paul L said:
Scenario one. You turn into a road and a cyclist is there on the road, headphones on and messing about with phone. Sets off without looking behind and your safe distance is suddenly anything but. It happened.

school zone with 20mph limit, kid runs across road without looking and hits car, heads are turned because driver has just hit car, was he speeding or driving without due care, is kid injured or worse. Police turn up, immediately show attitude to drive, thankfully a bystander says I saw it all, the boy just ran out, it’s amazing the driver managed to swerve away from the kid to minimise the injuries. The police continue, inspect the car, ask about speed, driver says I was below the limit and the kid hit me not the other way around, would you like to see the footage to prove it.

Chap pulls up and parks several feet behind a wheelchair access vehicle. Vehicle reverses before wanting to open the back door then tries to get hostile with the chap for pulling up behind him. Chap sees the conversation is getting nowhere then says I’m calling the police if you don’t back off and they can decide from viewing the footage.

There are countless stories like these.
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A few semi-coherent "what ifs", but most incidents on the road are between drivers or drivers hitting pedestrians or cyclists. Yet you are immediately looking for ways to blame the most vulnerable road users.
 
Blimey, it fast goes from offering advice, to other stuff.
I used to have a Cobra, it was fine for two years but then it kept asking to format the card. I tried several, so its back in the box. Like the OP I couldn't decide which one to buy, so I never bought another one.:rolleyes:
 
I’m speechless at the replies from W and VR. I’m a pedestrian, cyclist and driver and am mindful of all categories including commercial vehicles and motorbikes. But there would seem no point continuing on this topic so I’ll leave you to enjoy it.
 
Thinkware user here for some 7 yrs now, on 3 different motors.
Works well, integrates nicely, loads of options available as well.
Decent app and good image quality from downloaded sequences.
 
We've got Nextbase dashcams fitted to both our cars, after "Which?" recommended them, & they work just fine. There's an American company (can't remember their name at the moment) who sell a useful little adaptor that picks up the 12V supply from your auto-dipping interior mirror so it's a doddle to fit.
 
I'd hate to fit anything to my car that had an effect on how I drive. I've no doubt that if for some awful reason I had to drive in London I'd have front and rear cams, but here in Sleepy Suffolk, I rarely see anything except incompetence. Certainly nothing worth bothering the police with.
 
Is it an age thing? My FiL has one, he lives in a very sleepy village & doesn't really drive much. Is it some kind of fear thing? I have a couple of friends who have them on their bikes & I see quite a few go-pros on motorbike helmets. I just don't get it.
 
Woodface said:
Is it an age thing? My FiL has one, he lives in a very sleepy village & doesn't really drive much. Is it some kind of fear thing? I have a couple of friends who have them on their bikes & I see quite a few go-pros on motorbike helmets. I just don't get it.
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In an ideal world I would agree you shouldn't need one, I fitted one to my car because on my busy commute i saw so many motorists driving dangerously and who struggled with simple highway code rules, my wife passed at the idea. Two months later the car that she was driving was taken out by a speeding driver who turned left across her path at a junction, side swiping her car and sending it and her spinning up a dual carriageway, he claimed that she was the one in the wrong lane. Despite sending countless pictures of the signage and road markings at the approach to the junction showing him to be in the wrong he still tried to force her through the courts which my wife couldn't face.

Dash cam footage would very likely have stopped his nonsense once solicitors got involved. She now has front and rear dash cams fitted.

You need them because in the event that something does go wrong on the road there are people who will lie to get out of the fix they created and the system is not interested in conducting a logical analysis even when evidence is presented. The insurer said, "accidents at junctions are difficult!"
 
Roog said:
In an ideal world I would agree you shouldn't need one, I fitted one to my car because on my busy commute i saw so many motorists driving dangerously and who struggled with simple highway code rules, my wife passed at the idea. Two months later the car that she was driving was taken out by a speeding driver who turned left across her path at a junction, side swiping her car and sending it and her spinning up a dual carriageway, he claimed that she was the one in the wrong lane. Despite sending countless pictures of the signage and road markings at the approach to the junction showing him to be in the wrong he still tried to force her through the courts which my wife couldn't face.

Dash cam footage would very likely have stopped his nonsense once solicitors got involved. She now has front and rear dash cams fitted.

You need them because in the event that something does go wrong on the road there are people who will lie to get out of the fix they created and the system is not interested in conducting a logical analysis even when evidence is presented. The insurer said, "accidents at junctions are difficult!"
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I think if you get a guilty party like the one who ran into your wife I am not sure a dashcam would do any good. Insurance companies are generally keen on not paying out when they are not liable. I had an accident a few years ago, car on the other side of the road lost a wheel & crashed into me from the opposite lane. No dashcam but they did pay out, Direct Line were the other drivers insurer & they were brilliant, they even paid for my physio & compensated for injury.

I'm always a little wary of whether the police or courts will even consider the footage, it seems a very mixed picture.
 
Woodface said:
I'm always a little wary of whether the police or courts will even consider the footage, it seems a very mixed picture.
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They most certainly do, and there have been many prosecutions of motorists where someone has submitted dashcam footage of dangerous driving & people on mobile phones. 33 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales currently accept footage through the National Dash-cam Safety Portal.
Example…
 
Suffolk Tony said:
They most certainly do, and there have been many prosecutions of motorists where someone has submitted dashcam footage of dangerous driving & people on mobile phones. 33 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales currently accept footage through the National Dash-cam Safety Portal.
Example…
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Yes, this is getting better, not sure dashcam footage can detect mobile phone usage though. I appreciate that cyclists report a fair few of the latter, along with close passes. The attitude of police forces does seem to have changed in the last 12 months.
 
I've submitted 23 reports from mainly Dash Cam in the last 2 years. A few have been from me as a pedestrian with my mobile phone video. I think 20 out of the 23 reports have been enforced. The 3 that weren't were because 1 the registration wasn't identifiable (I now don't submit if I cannot identify registration), 1 the Police put a marker on the car to check the next time a Police car was near it and the other wasn't deemed to pass the CPS threshold, so no further action. Insurance companies like Dash Cam footage because of the evidential gains. There are cameras everywhere nowadays - vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians etc. People really need to remember this by driving and acting sensibly and seeing driving as privilege and not a deemed right.
 
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All very well, but the seriously dangerous driving is often done with cloned plates.

And be careful with your own actions. A violent coked up driver could well grab your dash cam, no matter what he has to do to get it.

23 reports in 2 years?
Please do us all a favour and share where most were taken so we can avoid it! ;)
 
Cloned plates are a real problem. However, I do think the Police ANPR system is developing so that it can now identify where cars should be and where they shouldn't. The offenders don't know when the Police have put a marker on the registration.
 
We generally have about a million uninsured drivers on the roads despite ANPR. I do wish this could be eradicated, be far less need for citizens to get involved.
 
Woodface said:
We generally have about a million uninsured drivers on the roads despite ANPR. I do wish this could be eradicated, be far less need for citizens to get involved.
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I would have thought this was a fairly easy thing to identify and target. Warning letters should be issued to the registered vehicle address for all ANPR hits where vehicles don't have Insurance, VED or a valid MOT. Like the TV License Warning letters, they should warn the registered keeper that the vehicle now has a Police marker against it and will be pursued by the next Police car that sees it out on the public roads. I'm surprised the Tories haven't already subcontracted this to Capita.
 
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