I wanted to share my experience with the Pilot CL-3004WK Dashcam (aka "Walmart" dash cam) as a warning to other people that may decide to purchase this model in the future. It was a gift to me from my parents last Christmas.
My camera came with the 4 GB stick and was programmed to loop the recordings, and shut off when the car is turned off.
I was hit by another car at an intersection when the other driver ran the red light. Not surprisingly, she claimed to the police and insurance company that I ran the red light and filed a claim against me.
After the police pointed out that I had a dash cam, she changed her story saying that I was going too fast and the police were confident she was at fault and stated so in the police report.
I went to obtain the footage of the accident from the Dash cam, and to my complete shock, it was lost! It didn't save the footage of the accident. When the accident happened, the plug for the dash cam was knocked out of the power outlet so it turned off but I assumed that it would save the video recording properly before shutting down.
We used data recovery tools to obtain what data we could from the SD card. It turns out that the dash cam also saved JPEG photos every few seconds and it showed that I was stopped at the red light. But the last few seconds, when the light changed green and I proceeded into the intersection, was no saved. Even those photos were deleted and recovery tools were needed to extract them.
I called the company and they stood by their product saying that it could not have lost those recordings and it must have been my error.
I submitted the photos from the SD card that showed I stopped at the red light, but this worked against me. The question was raised by her insurance company, what happened to the photos of the accident? Surely they were there if I got photos from seconds before the accident happened itself.
There was another awful bug in this model of the camera that seemingly has falsely incriminated me for fraud. It didn't update the date/time stamp for each photo to reflect the actual time, only the time when it started recording. For each photo, the date/time stamp was static. I've uploaded the "deleted" photos recovered from the dash cam that shows the same date/time stamp.
This gave the appearance to the insurance company that the pictures were forgery and that I lied. This dash cam not only failed to preserve it's recording of the accident, but has falsely incriminated me for fraud. I would advise others to stay far away from this model dash cam from Pilot. I personally will never trust a product from Pilot again.
Thanks,
Alan Owen
My camera came with the 4 GB stick and was programmed to loop the recordings, and shut off when the car is turned off.
I was hit by another car at an intersection when the other driver ran the red light. Not surprisingly, she claimed to the police and insurance company that I ran the red light and filed a claim against me.
After the police pointed out that I had a dash cam, she changed her story saying that I was going too fast and the police were confident she was at fault and stated so in the police report.
I went to obtain the footage of the accident from the Dash cam, and to my complete shock, it was lost! It didn't save the footage of the accident. When the accident happened, the plug for the dash cam was knocked out of the power outlet so it turned off but I assumed that it would save the video recording properly before shutting down.
We used data recovery tools to obtain what data we could from the SD card. It turns out that the dash cam also saved JPEG photos every few seconds and it showed that I was stopped at the red light. But the last few seconds, when the light changed green and I proceeded into the intersection, was no saved. Even those photos were deleted and recovery tools were needed to extract them.
I called the company and they stood by their product saying that it could not have lost those recordings and it must have been my error.
I submitted the photos from the SD card that showed I stopped at the red light, but this worked against me. The question was raised by her insurance company, what happened to the photos of the accident? Surely they were there if I got photos from seconds before the accident happened itself.
There was another awful bug in this model of the camera that seemingly has falsely incriminated me for fraud. It didn't update the date/time stamp for each photo to reflect the actual time, only the time when it started recording. For each photo, the date/time stamp was static. I've uploaded the "deleted" photos recovered from the dash cam that shows the same date/time stamp.
This gave the appearance to the insurance company that the pictures were forgery and that I lied. This dash cam not only failed to preserve it's recording of the accident, but has falsely incriminated me for fraud. I would advise others to stay far away from this model dash cam from Pilot. I personally will never trust a product from Pilot again.
Thanks,
Alan Owen
