Re: Dash Cams
 

That's rather like saying 'why bother with flight recorders in aircraft? It's already crashed, so what's the point?'

Re: Dash Cams
 

Hardly. The flight recorder is a standard device recovered after a crash designed and used to attempt to determine the cause of the crash.

It's not likely that anyone would be interested in the cause of a car crash, not likely that the dash cam would survive, not likely that anyone would look for it and not likely that it would capture useful information. It's a toy. Of course, there's nothing wrong with having toys, I just don't see where the fun is in this one.

Would you want to watch yourself rear ending someone over and over?

(Automotively, that is).

Re: Dash Cams
 

Hardly a toy. I wouldn't be surprised if the insurance industry incentivised dashcams in coming years. Plus they are worth their weight in gold for capturing footage of falling meteorites and crashing jets.

Re: Dash Cams
 

I think you're wrong in thinking nobody would be interested in a car crash.
If someone dies or is very badly injured, and it is on film, the police, insurance companies would be very interested. Could be used in court cases.
Truck companies in the UK that have dash cams on their trucks are getting big discounts on their insurance now.
And even if the dash cam breaks in an accident, it is then all but over and is on the memory card.

Re: Dash Cams
 

Where's the interest to the insurance company? Fault is only a matter of concern in personal injury accidents and a front facing dash cam is not likely to show that the splattered pedestrian was to blame.

Re: Dash Cams
 

Fair points on the card still being usable and the images being of interest in accidents with injuries. Still, it's not like a recorder in a plane, something used to determine the cause of the crash. In vehicular collisions the cause is almost always "driver error", the fight is only over which driver was most at fault.

Re: Dash Cams
 

And in plane crashes, the cause is almost always 'pilot error'.

The difference is that, with plane crashes, we don't say 'well, pilots suck, get over it', we try to work out why the error happened, and prevent it in future. The only proven method to reduce car crashes is to improve the roads, because most 'driver error' happens because of poor road design. I'd like to know how 'driver error' allowed someone to be driving the wrong way down the road, so I can watch out for it next time. In a sane world, the local government would also want to know that so they could fix the road, but that would cost them money, so they won't.

Re: Dash Cams
 

Anyway, in a few years Google and Apple cars will be chauffeuring us all around. ;)

Re: Dash Cams
 

I thought it was the metric system resulting in running out of petrol. Oh, and that terrorism business.

I'd have thought that quite straightforward. The Special AKA are on the radio, the passenger is gloating about Chelsea losing to PSG, the driver thinks he's at home and goes along on the wrong side. I find it a stretch to see how being on the wrong side of the road is not driver error; unless, I suppose, it's one of those driverless google car thingies.

Re: Dash Cams
 

I know it sounds a bit sad but bought one of those Go Pro cameras a few days ago as my dad wants to fish vicariously with me plus he wants to show his mates down the pub my fishing and crabbing exploits. Now I have to figure out whether I mount it to the top of the boat or to my hat. :confused:

Re: Dash Cams
 

One of the big selling points for dash cams in Russia, is to catch scammers. Those dirtbags that drive in front of you then stop sharply or reverse into you, and demand instant payment.

But they don't do that in Canada ;-)

Re: Dash Cams
 

Are you sure? Have a look at this dashcam video, taken on the 401.

Re: Dash Cams
 

A colleague at work has just totalled her third minivan in a timespan of one year. She is a female Asian driver from Markham, but that is of course purely coincidental.

Anyways, her latest gem of a crash involves driving through a green light and getting hit on the side by someone running a red light. Captured quite nicely on the dashcam. A few seconds later though, the owner of the car that ran the red can be seen jumping in front of my colleague's (totalled) car, swearing loudly and shouting that my colleague ran a red.

That is why you need a dashcam, IMHO.

Re: Dash Cams
 

I've been threatening to buy one for a long time but I almost got so badly T boned a couple of weeks ago, I just had to put one in. There are lots of pros and cons for this one, but on the whole I'm just frustrated with it all. I shouldn't have to avoid being killed going to/from work, on almost a weekly basis, because there are so many knob heads out there who, quite honestly, couldn't give two shiny shites about anyone else on the road other than themselves.

Re: Dash Cams
 

I have one of those, cost me the princely sum of $63. Plus the micro SD card.

In that video he says it doesn't work properly with class 10, well what I've found is that if set to 30fps/720p using a class 6 card, it ALWAYS stops recording exactly after 76 minutes and 31 seconds. Seems to be a fixed limit it will not go beyond.

Also the buttons on it are pretty crappy, they won't hold up to much use I suspect. But for $63 you can't really complain too much, the video that it produces is pretty decent.

Anyway, anyone saying you don't need one in Canada, I beg to differ. I basically bought it as a toy, but I went through some roadworks last week that damaged my car - and I now have video of what happened. Cue argument with contractor: "by the way, I have dashcam video of it". End of argument.

Bit of a pain in the backside editing a 4GB video file (especially as it is MOV format) but it can be done and thus I now have a 65MB two-minute video of their utterly crap and deficient roadworks.

Paid for itself right there.