Back when I was a full-time pedestrian, I seriously considered carrying a box of caltrops to deal with one particular driver behavior that was seriously dangerous to me, as a pedestrian: That idiot who is intent upon making a free right turn on red, and continues to stare down the road to his/her left while actually making the turn.
The reason this was dangerous to me was that these drivers would be so locked in to looking for an opening that they would completely fail to notice that their light had turned green. So, with me standing on the same corner waiting to cross, I’d get my “WALK” signal and start to cross, just as this driver would starting turning right, directly at me, while still staring in the opposite direction.
The same thing happens with these people turning onto one-way streets: it never crosses their mind that something might possibly be coming from the wrong direction. Usually a pedestrian on the sidewalk, walking against the direction of traffic, but possibly a vehicle driving the wrong way. These drivers will never see it because they only look one direction, and continue looking in that direction while pulling out. (EDIT: This is mostly happens when they’re pulling out of a parking lot, not at intersections.)
I’ve often thought about getting a dashcam. There are so many idiot drivers out there, I’d probably have enough material do a weekly show on YouTube.
Similar to the OP’s item #3, I was walking out of Target last weekend and a car slowed down as it approached the pedestrian crossing area. I’m about a foot away from her car when she suddenly sped up and drove through instead of stopping. I wondered why she even bothered slowing down at all…
I’ve learned that if I’m on a bicycle or my feet, I’m invisible.
Drivers are so keyed into watching for other cars that I’m not sure they can even see anything smaller than a Honda Fit. I once got hit in a crosswalk by a left-turner who “just never saw me”. My (overly-harsh) comment was “Hey, what if I’d had a baby stroller? Would you have seen me then?”
I’ve had a dash cam for a few years now. It’s been worth every penny, not only because of the insurance it provides against someone mindlessly crushing your car and the potential YouTube entertainment value, but the moderating influence it has on me. After all, if you’re recording it catches all the dickheads out there. Including you. You have an accident and the police are certainly going to want to talk to you about your video, and if you’re the dickhead you have a video confession right there. It’s quite an unconscious but effective moderating influence.
Anyway, I use a Pruveeo C2 dash cam. It has two integrated cameras so I give up some rearward vision but it’s good enough and I have cabin coverage and it’s all one unit. If you want separate cameras I recommend the Rexing V1P. You can get cheaper but the quality is top shelf and it’s going to be my next one when my current one fails, as they all do sooner or later. Remember, a car cabin is an environment of extremes, and they all have temperature and exposure limits. Nice features to have are G-Force sensors that wake it up and/or lock the video in memory in case of an accident (moving or parked) and GPS which logs your speed and location, which further proves your innocence (or guilt). Also, get the hard-wire kit. Nothing says “steal me” like a lighter cord. As big as mine is you might not even notice it’s there because of how I installed it.
What, for the ankle? Their response to these incidents was insanely calm.
You want tense, manic driving, come out here to Northern California. :eek:
I would like to have a dashcam. At the moment they seem just a tad too demanding for the general market. They seem to be for automotive and electronics aficionados. What I want is an out-of-the box package I have my local garage install. I want it to:
Record on a loop
With pretty good resolution
With sound
Front and back
And download everything to the Cloud when I tell it to.
I see a market opening, as I do not think such a product is out there yet.
You mean “upload”. Could maybe the Russian dashcams do that already? They seem to have them in every car in their country these days.
Dashcams are popular in Russia because of the many faked accidents. I am afraid of some crazed policemen deleting my recording.
I think the last wish may take a while. You need some kind of data connection for that, so I suppose you can link it with your phone right now to transfer it to the cloud, but that data transfer may take awhile and you need to be nearby with your phone and a solid data connection; or you can wait until city-wide wireless broadband is available.
Enough with these small-potatoes suggestions. Let’s go straight to Dave Barry’s Atomic Land Torpedoes.
N/M
Am I the only one who reads the thread title as “That’s it! I’m buying a bloody dachshund!” and thinks “oooh Gatopescado will be thrilled”?
I see your bet, and raise you the Dalek Reality Bomb!
I used to commute 100+ miles every day. I kinda got immune to idiots. I cannot stay mad all the time. That said, I used to have a fantasy while driving, that I was a Super Trooper, who didn’t deal with mundane things like robbery or murder. Their only power was to issue a citation, “ Too Stupid to Drive”. Lifetime driving ban, no appeal allowed. My wife says I need better fantasies…������
So while you were brake checking and swerving on to the shoulder, the Nissan driver was debating calling LEO about an unsafe or inebriated driver who didn’t know where he was and couldn’t stay in his lane.
I did!
not swerving, just allowing the right side tires to drift naturally to the road edge on a faint curve in the road and hover near the edge of the road, almost no steering input, swerving would be dangerous, I did not turn the wheel to the right.
the brake “checking” was no more than a slightly heavier tap on the brake pedal to make the brake lights kick on quicker
either way, the jerk in the truck was being far more aggressive than me, yes, two wrongs don’t make a right (but three…do! 
) but I wasn’t the one following too closely, and I was at the speed limit.
Anyway, ive been reading dashcam reviews on Amazon, and it’s been a major headache, even the cams recommended in this thread (thanks for the recommendations, BTW) have some disturbing one and two star ratings (I always read the low ratings when making a decision, I don’t need to read glowing reviews, I want to know what happens when the item goes wrong…)
I’ve basically figured out the requirements;
Want;
Supercapacitor power as it handles temperature extremes better
4K video or 1080P at the lowest
impact sensing/autosave
Loop recording
Can handle high cap SD cards
good low light performance
Nice to have;
infrared front illumination at night, or some form of night vision
Rear camera with external view
Don’t want or need;
cabin view camera
GPS speed logging (even though I don’t deliberately speed, less self-incriminating data is better
Above all, however, it MUST be reliable, don’t want it crapping out on me in 6 months or less…
About the cabin view? Would that CYA when the LEO pulls you over for “drifting” on to the shoulder of the road and you want the encounter with him recorded to make sure it is all on the up and up?
I expect the next version of premium packages for autos to include front, side, and rear cameras along with a vehicle dash readout saving. Sort of a black box for cars to augment the drivers version of events.