Slightly OT: Dash cams

I use one of these for much less cash. It is 1080P front and 720p rear. Has G sensor. Will turn on if anyone is messing with the car too. Only problem is hiding the wires but you can get a wireless version if that is a problem.

Garmin Dash Cam 20

Thanks guys, much appreciated.

Just make sure you get one that includes a rear facing camera. It used to be the case that in event of a shunt the driver in front was in the right automatically but not these days.

Good point Don. I made a mistake when I posted the original message and meant to include uk.d-i-y but forgot and did a separate message over there. Someone has just addressed that very thing with this reply:

That is a feature of many professional systems. Some allow up to four cameras, so you can have sideways views too. However, when I had somebody drive into the back of me a month ago, the dash can would still have been useful had he not admitted total liability. It showed that I was stationary at the time of impact. It also showed that I had slowed gently to a halt onto the end of a traffic queue and not braked suddenly or unexpectedly.

I have a mini-0803 which works well enough, but if you are willing to spend more then there are probably others with fewer quality control issues. (It works for me but the not quite polished state of the firmware is annoying, a new model tends to appear before the old one is fixed.)

None.

Dash-cams are for wankers.

Who have you crashed into to say that?

I haven't, and that's the point.

Drive defensively and appropriately and you won't need a camera.

I've also been on the receiving end of a dash cam wanker pontificating about the driving of a car just a few weeks before I took it out of our car pool - I had to push Youtube to remove it.

I also have some major concerns with the privacy issues surrounding members of the public recording other people and distributing it without any regulation. (see above).

Finally, most dash cam wankers seem to drive in such a way as to caused incidents around them, just so they can post about it on the 'net and 'prove' how right they were to get a camera.

Umm, they're recording public activity. No more, no less. No different to being in a photograph of a street scene. It's perfectly legal and long may it remain so, despite the efforts of some ill-informed policemen to deem it "terrorism" and suchlike silliness.

I can symphatise vith this view, in particular the cycle cams on youtube sometimes seem to be provoking incidents in order to produce their foottage.

Bear in mind that dashcams really started as a weapon against staged accidents; if someone stages an accident in front of you by e.g. hard braking, then you collide. No amount of defensive driving will prevent this.

I don't have much sympathy for the victims of 'staged' accidents. They still shouldn't be so close to any car in front of them that they can't stop.

That's exactly what defensive driving will prevent!

You can't defend against a bloody great 4x4 which overtakes on a bend across double white centre lines and narrowly misses the oncoming vehicle. If they'd hit, I'd have been included in their collision. :-(

Do you ever drive in London? Do you think London traffic would flow if everyone left enough space at all times to stop if the vehicle in front did an emergency stop for no good reason?

Would improve things as there would be no minor prangs bringing everything to a standstill!

Yes I do drive in London and do indeed leave room to stop. Traffic always flows fine when I am on the road.

Spot on

Well, some would claim that you should be driving with a safe braking distance in mind... but I'll just say that a dashcam is unlikely to influence the outcome of that particular claim anyway.