Hello Everyone,
I’m watching FAIL videos on YouTube (great fun!) Which has led me to car crash videos (interesting, but horrific). Misty of the crash footage seems to come from Russia. Why is itoso many people use dash cams there? Do the insurance companies there require it?
Dude, have you seen how the Russians drive?
Yeah, those Russians are crazy!
I remember asking this question years ago (not on this forum) & the explanation I heard was that there is a lot of police corruption, so citizens want to keep a record of things. No idea how accurate that is.
I’ve heard there’s also a common scam where the scammer reverses and backs into another car, and then claims that the other car rear-ended him and sues. A dash-cam lets you defend against such claims.
Many of their insurance companies require cameras or give discounts for having one because of the bad drivers, scammers, and corrupt police.
I don’t understand why some countries have so few dashcams.
They’re inexpensive, help prove your level of culpability in the event of an accident, and you can record the license plate of anyone doing anything illegal (e.g. hit and run).
Also many cameras have a security mode where you can leave them in your car and they will start to record if they detect any change in the picture, or motion.
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Russia has a unique combination of lots of terrible drivers, lots of vodak, people pulling insurance scams, and corrupt police. The result is a large percentage of drivers feel it is necessary to protect themselves with dashcams.
IMHO everyone who drives should get one. At this point they’re dirt cheap and completely automatic. There’s no downside. (Unless you plan to be a drunk driver or something.)
Can anyone recommend a particular model? Last I checked (about 2 years ago) there were a lot of 3-4 star ones but none that particularly seemed “perfect”. Have they improved much recently?
I think it was here that someone from Russia said, dashcams were used “to prevent the police from accepting your bribe and then arresting you anyway.”
There’s a few YouTube channels which specialize in North American or European Union dashcam footage. Since the available pool of videos is much lower, they tend to mainly comprise of near misses and road rage. What’s interesting is that in at least half the cases, it’s the person with the dashcam who’s the asshole. Sometimes the driver will even deliberately steer into the person who cut them off! :dubious:
My favorite genre is the “brake check.” Generally some dumbass offended by people with the temerity to drive the actual speed limit, so they pass and then slam on the brakes to freak you out. Often followed by the brake-checker getting arrested or wrecking in a ditch.
This.
In the UK, the main driver for fitting dashcams is the tendency of insurance companies to rule fault at 50/50 in the absence of independent witnesses, combined with a rise in cash-for-cash scams. Few insurance companies give discounts for fitting them though.
I too find it strange that so many people post videos of some other driver behaving badly and revealing their own bad driving as well.
I’ve heard that their leaders (Putin, Trump, et al) encourage it.
I think you don’t see more dashcams because they’re a pain to install. Cars just aren’t made for them. You either have them dangling from the rearview mirror or glued to some mount on the dashboard, then you have to find a way to run the power cable all around the headliner or over the dash. It wouldn’t be hard for car manufacturers to build a cam into the rearview mirror unobtrusively and to give the backup camera recording abilities, but as it is the solutions are all aftermarket kludges.
There’s a message board out there all about dashcams. IIRC they have one forum for each major brand. They don’t make mention of mine, but I’ve been happy with it so far, it’s a Rexing. You can usually catch it on sale for well under a hundred dollars and I’ve been happy with it for the last 6 months. It may leave a bit to be desired, but the picture is good and it’s easy to use so it works for me.
One thing I have heard, however, is that you’re better off getting a second one (especially for how cheap they are) rather than getting one that also has a rear camera. Apparently the rear cameras have a fairly low resolution.
Regarding the break checking. When I watch all those videos, I’m always surprised at how many people will break check a semi, sometimes multiple times. You can’t feel sorry for them when they end up getting rear ended and it really seems like those cameras must exonerate the drivers. In many cases, without them, it would sure look like the ‘our’ driver would be at fault.
I’m glad I haven’t had to use mine yet*, but it does make me a much calmer driver. There’s been plenty of times where I’ve had some jackass being a jackass and instead of wondering about a confrontation at the next redlight, I can just point at the dashcam.
*I have used it once or twice as a surveillance camera, but that’s it.
Huh?
That’s one variation. Another is pedestrians who run into your car/jump on your hood/lie down on the road in front of your car, and claim you struck them. Apparently a problem in (at least) Russia and China.
People routinely ignore traffic laws here in Taiwan, so we have one for our protection.
Most of the ones available have issues, especially ones that have batteries for backup when the car is off. The interior of the car next to the glass is one of the most demanding places to put an electronic device as temperatures can approach or exceed 180 degrees F on a sunny day in Arizona or 30 degrees below zero in Montana.
I fully expect car manufacturers to offer these as options in the near future. They can mount them in a more protected area (like under the mirrors or on a bumper). They also will require whoever supplies them to meet very rigorous standards that other components need to pass. The ones you buy off of Amazon do not fully meet automotive testing standards and often fail after a short time period (within a year or two) that would be unacceptable for a manufacturer supplied part.
With so many cars already having rear view cameras and plenty of them having side view cameras, I’ve always wondered how long it’ll be before they start giving you the option to drop in an SD card and just record that feed. It seems trivial at that point. The camera and all the wiring is there, all they’d need to do get the electronics from an established dash cam manufacturer and run the feed into the board. Some collaboration and they could probably get the interface right on the dashboard LCD with everything else.