A friend was driving on a 35 mph country road, and came upon a utility company truck doing some maintenance. Their flagman motioned to stop, and she did and patiently waited. Soon a second vehicle came from behind and hit my friend. Her Volvo station wagon was totaled and she developed severe concussion symptoms.

Five months later, while waiting at a stop light, she was hit again in the rear. $9,000 of damage to her new car. Now her severe concussion symptoms turned into extreme problems. Three years later she still has big problems.

She was hit from behind, so the other's insurance will pay up, right? Easy case, no?

While she was waiting for the tow truck, the utility company vehicle took off. They had no warning signs and only a flagman at the truck itself, so they were at partially at fault.

Vehicle number 2 was driven by a teenager, who had a teenage friend for a passenger. Said passenger ran and hid when the tow truck showed up. The insurance company for car 2 does not want to pay, claiming that my friend was stopped in the middle of the road for no reason.

If my friend had a dual dash cam, it would have:
1. Proven that there was a utility vehicle in the roadway, and that it had not properly flagged the road.
2. Shown which utility company it was (they would then have to pay).
3. Shown that there was a passenger in vehicle #2, so that vehicle would have been more clearly at fault.

The insurance company just settled yesterday with my friend, but the settlement was probably half of what it would have been if she had video. After 3 years, my friend can still not work and has significant memory and other issues. So moral of the story, buy a dual dash cam before the accident.

I put in a Rexing Dual dashcam, that does not use batteries and has great video day or night.

https://www.amazon.com/Rexing-...id=1576283429&sr=8-5

In one morning I was almost hit, head-on, three times by three distracted drivers. I was able to avoid the crashes only by God's grace.

I realized that if I'd been hit, and likely seriously injured or killed, there would have been claims that I was at fault and someone would have sued me or my estate leaving my wife to defend.

The next day I bought a dash cam and it is on all the time.

Bob

Do you have to run power to both units to keep the capacitor charged and does the kit come with the connectors for the power?

Freaky - I was just researching "Black boxes for cars" this morning. I like your setup, I may just have to acquire one. thanks for posting!

Absolutely agree! Dash cams are an excellent idea these days.

FWIW, I went through three Rexing cams (they kept failing, but their CS is excellent) before switching to Street Guardian. Much better build quality and no reliability issues. Three times the price, but worth it, IMO.

YMMV, of course.

-Rob

Never mind my post above. The company site has all my answers but as usual, you need to buy additional accessories to really make it functional for my needs. Will probably go ahead and order the kit as it looks good for the price.

I’ve been running one in my cars for almost 6 years now. I highly recommend them. It’s a shame cars don’t have them factory-equipped.

Because of a post in this forum about a year ago about dash cams I jumped into the deep end and purchased the one being recommended by our forum friends....Installed it two days after it came in....Funny thing happened right after I installed this in my daily driver truck....My wife said ever since installing this dash cam I have become a better more defensive driver....Almost like I have someone in the front seat of my truck saying - “Slow down Mark - Be careful Mark - Don’t follow so close Mark”.....Just saying for me it has been a great investment...Mark

Driving to S FL & then back to help the Son move. I have a dash cam, as does he.

I haven’t captured anything exciting yet, but I’m ready. I’m leaving in just a few days.

With all the talk of dash cameras here at SF, I recently repurposed an old iPhone 6 I had laying around and made my own. It works fine and makes use of an otherwise valueless piece of hardware thanks to Apple no longer updating the iOS for this model.
online image hosting

After getting rear ended and the fucker ran, I got a front & rear cam.

quote:

Originally posted by sourdough44:
Driving to S FL & then back to help the Son move. I have a dash cam, as does he.

I haven’t captured anything exciting yet, but I’m ready. I’m leaving in just a few days.

I caught someone else accident last week. I gave it to the Sheriff's deputy. The deputy was able to see that one person entered the intersection on the yellow, while the other enter on the red. The red light runner turned left in front the yellow light guy and they collided bead on. Yellow light guy was booking it to make the light. Neither of them could see each other because there was a third car in the intersection waiting to make the left turn. Once that car cleared the intersection, pow.

The eyewitnesses thought both drivers ran the red, but the video showed clearly that wasn't the case.

A rear view camera is a must. Even then, I was side swiped at a light and the guy never pulled in front of me so neither I nor my camera could get his plate.

c1steve,

I'm sorry about your friend. Her story is an example of how so many people won't just do the right thing.

When I worked at the city bus garage one of my tasks at the end of the day was to download all the cameras. The feature that I liked about those cams was that they would record 13 seconds back from the time of a collision. That is probably a must, because things can happen so fast that you barely have time to react, let alone hand-activate a camera.
Do all dash cams have this feature?

I have been thinking about installing one of these for a long time. Especially good for old people, where an officer and the insurance would tend to believe a good actor over a good driver. If you get my drift.

My wife and I were discussing how angry the drivers in our area were getting. Aggressive, inconsiderate, belligerent, and just plain stupid.

We decided that we should have dash cameras. I found a great deal on the Garmin DriveAssist 50 (three functions: GPS, dash camera, and display screen for the Garmin BC-30 back-up camera), so I ordered two of them, one each for my wife and for me.

It was less than two weeks later that Mercedes Girl ran a red light, slammed into the side of my truck, doing several thousand dollars damage, and then lied to the cop, telling him that I had run the red light.

The video clearly showed me proceeding through a green light with the GPS speed showing 23 mph in a 35 mph zone. The cop wrote her up.

I sent a copy of the video to Flo (Mercedes Girl was insured by Progressive) and they acknowledged 100% responsibility, no discussion, no hassle.

It took less than two weeks for the cameras to pay for themselves.

Yes, no excuse not to have one in every vehicle, cheap insurance.

I bought them for all of our vehicles after I was sideswiped on an on ramp, they merged into me. They lied to the police saying I came across several lanes and hit them. Police man said it's a " he said, he said" case. No fault. They tried to make a claim on my insurance, insurance told them to pack sand, no fault on accident report. I didn't make a claim because I didn't want my rates to go up

quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge: It’s a shame cars don’t have them factory-equipped.

I seriously don't understand why they don't. New vehicles have every other sort of expensive sensor you can imagine built in. Having a hard wired, robust dash cam doesn't seem like it would add much cost.

I know the answer, because dash cams are common enough where it's not an issue, but I'll ask for feedback:

How is your field of vision not compromised by having a cam mounted on your dash/windshield?

quote:

Originally posted by zipriderson:
I know the answer, because dash cams are common enough where it's not an issue, but I'll ask for feedback:

How is your field of vision not compromised by having a cam mounted on your dash/windshield?

Dash cams really aren’t that common yet. At least not in the US.

Mine are mounted slightly higher and to the right of the rear view mirror. They have never impeded my view.

Timely thread. My family has been asking what I want for Xmas and I keep saying nothing. Okay, maybe a rear camera to go with the front view one I have.

quote:

Originally posted by MNSIG:

quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge: It’s a shame cars don’t have them factory-equipped.

I seriously don't understand why they don't. New vehicles have every other sort of expensive sensor you can imagine built in. Having a hard wired, robust dash cam doesn't seem like it would add much cost.

Yeah makes no sense to me. I already have both front facing and rear facing cameras on my car why not hook them up to a $40 USB thumb drive?

The only reason I don't have one is they are ugly. I'd love an integrated one. China sells one on eBay that goes over my review mirror assembly (which houses my cars front facing camera) and adds a dashcam, specs aren't great, but no cords.