I recently joined this Forum, so forgive me if this topic has already been addressed and beat to a pulp. Hopefully my law enforcement perspective will give you all a little bit more to chew on.
At the end of this topic, if you care to read further, I’ve included a “slightly” off-topic story of how I used evidence no bigger than the head of a pin to solve a no-witness traffic accident, but more importantly, how the good guys won.
There are so many different types and qualities of Dash-Cams on the market. Some are very basic and others show your GPS position, speed, temp, time and inside voice recording.
I’ll use this one traffic accident scenario as an example:
You are happily cruising along a city street approaching an intersection. Your green light suddenly turns yellow as you comfortably enter the intersection. Out of nowhere, you suddenly collide with a car who enters the intersection from your right. You feel confident you entered the intersection on a yellow light but he and his car load of passengers say he had the green which would imply you had the red. As is often the case, no other drivers had the decency to stop to give their eye witness account of the accident.
Now depending on your speed thru the intersection, you could have and likely did enter the intersection on a yellow and his light could have turned green before you cleared the intersection however, he is required to ensure the intersection is clear before he starts out. You feel very confident you are not at fault and it’s likely you’re right especially since you know you have a smoking gun.
5-8 minutes later, here comes the law. You surprise everyone at the scene as you put the final nail in the other driver’s coffin when you announce you have a Dash-Cam. At this point, I assure you, if the officer could kiss you he/she would...you’ve just trimmed hours off his written investigation.
In the middle of this big love fest, the officer asks if he could see the video. You whip out your cell phone or your ipad and since you have a Black-Vue DR500GW-HD, you log into the app and pull up a beautiful video of the time frame in question. So, contrary to what some of you were saying in the last thread about the importance of having a Dash-Cam, the officer will have absolutely no qualms about sitting in your car, sticking his head in your car or sitting on top of your car as he views the evidence.
There it is...clear as day. You entered the intersection with the yellow and here comes this Bozo from the right. It’s pretty clear...you give a sigh of relief, he gives a sigh of defeat and the officer...well, he’s excited at the thought he’ll now have enough time at the end of his shift to enjoy a 2nd donut...life’s good!!! But wait...what’s this little number in the GPS info? It says 33...oh my...that’s your speed. The officer looks at the speed limit sign across the street...it says 30 MPH.
OK, so here’s where you stand. The officer will complete his investigation. He will suggest you retain your SD card for your insurance company...he has enough info from the video. He will write in his narrative that you presented to him and he personally viewed your Dash-Cam info showing you entered the intersection on a legal yellow...at 33 mph in a 30 MPH zone. He will still show Mr. Bozo was at fault, BUT...by your own evidence, he will state your GPS/DASH-CAM indicates you were exceeding the posted speed limit. On the surface, that makes you partially culpable since Mr. Bozo would argue if you were traveling 3 mph slower, you would not have reached him thus there would not have been a collision.
Since technically, the officer doesn’t know the difference between a Dash-Cam and a jelly donut, he has no way of knowing the accuracy, calibrated date or authenticity of your video. Mr. Bozo’s insurance company will now have a little more teeth, albeit baby teeth, but bite back ability none-the-less. I would suspect they will likely come to an agreement where each insurance company will settle on fixing their own driver’s cars and move on from there...all because your Dash-Cam inadvertently presented the other side with ammo.
Now I would never ever suggest you lie at a traffic accident though many do. What I would suggest is, if you believe you were in the right, say so. If the officer is on the fence or leans in favor of the other driver and he lists you as the primary cause of the accident, don’t sweat it. Remember, officers written traffic investigations is merely a guideline for insurance companies based solely on all the facts he/she had at the time.
What you should do is go home, quickly view your SD Card video. If it clearly shows you in the right, download the video ONLY on your computer. Use your computer’s video viewer program to separate the GPS data from the actual video, copy the video to disc and present the disc to your insurance company. You also have the right to go down to the police station to add an addendum to the original report in the form of a statement. Your statement could simply be you have additional evidence in the form of a video of the accident that you are submitting to the insurance company. Your video will not change the officer’s assessment of who was at fault, however, it is now part of the official written investigation.
Is this an ethical thing to do? You bet it is. Opposing attorneys will always look for any smidgen of evidence to poke holes in your story. A non-highway posted speed limit in California indicates “safe speed for conditions” Driving 33 MPH in a 30 MPH zone is arguably NOT unsafe and you should not have to risk the chance of your insurance premiums going up for driving 3 MPH over the speed limit. Even though technically, you are exceeding the speed limit.
Hopefully this offered a little more insight on the pros and cons of having a Dash-Cam.
A short slightly off-topic story about evidence at an accident scene:
One day I received a radio call to investigate a non injury accident that was holding up rush hour traffic in our very busy downtown area. When I arrived, it was chaotic. A car with 5 overly excited women claimed the 18 wheeler a block further up the hill rear ended their convertible rental car. They ordered the trucker to pull over to await police but the trucker flipped them off and drove around them. He obviously gave it a 2nd thought as he noticed they were writing down his plate, so he stopped a block up the hill.
On occasion, my agency suspends investigating non-injury accidents due to personnel shortages. Instead, we facilitate the exchange of info and suggest drivers contact their respective insurance companies which is what I had planned to do that day.
Curiously, I asked the truck driver if he hit their car, his response was, “These F---ing B-tches were sight seeing and holding up traffic so I hit the air horn and they got pissed. They got out and cursed me out so I drove around them. I stopped up the block when they yelled they are calling the police to say I hit them.
His condescending attitude left me with little choice but to conduct a written investigation with deep down hopes of finding him at fault. With his 2 witnesses inside his truck swearing on everything holy they never even came close to the car and the 5 women swearing he did, I had nothing to go by. The rear bumper was pushed in enough to cause these ladies grief with Budget Rent A Car because they opted out of collision coverage.
After 15 minutes of listening to both sides, I told the ladies not to worry...the trucker was at fault and I would write it up that way. The trucker blew a gasket saying I had no evidence and he would have my job.
I walked the trucker up the block, took out a small white piece of paper and a knife. I scraped a pin-head size bug from his undamaged monster size bumper. We then walked back to the rear of the ladies mustang, bent down and again, with my knife, I scraped an identical dead bug off the back of their bumper-mounted license plate. I told the trucker the only way this dead bug could find his way to the rear bumper of their car is if the ladies drove their car at 60 mph...backwards or...his front bug infested bumper came in contact with their rear license plate. His response was, ”well, maybe I just lightly tapped their bumper, but that was it.” The ladies rejoiced and the truck driver just stood there like the idiot he was. I gave the ladies my business card and told them to have Budget give me a call if there’s a problem.
Two months later, I received a monster sized thank you card from all 5 ladies signed by over 100 kids thanking me for being a police officer...the ladies were grade school teachers.
The reason for this story, other than it was hopefully somewhat entertaining, is evidence at the scene of a traffic accident, no matter what kind, will almost always work.
So, at the scene of a traffic accident, showing an officer a video account of what happened can, without question, help you.
At the end of this topic, if you care to read further, I’ve included a “slightly” off-topic story of how I used evidence no bigger than the head of a pin to solve a no-witness traffic accident, but more importantly, how the good guys won.
There are so many different types and qualities of Dash-Cams on the market. Some are very basic and others show your GPS position, speed, temp, time and inside voice recording.
I’ll use this one traffic accident scenario as an example:
You are happily cruising along a city street approaching an intersection. Your green light suddenly turns yellow as you comfortably enter the intersection. Out of nowhere, you suddenly collide with a car who enters the intersection from your right. You feel confident you entered the intersection on a yellow light but he and his car load of passengers say he had the green which would imply you had the red. As is often the case, no other drivers had the decency to stop to give their eye witness account of the accident.
Now depending on your speed thru the intersection, you could have and likely did enter the intersection on a yellow and his light could have turned green before you cleared the intersection however, he is required to ensure the intersection is clear before he starts out. You feel very confident you are not at fault and it’s likely you’re right especially since you know you have a smoking gun.
5-8 minutes later, here comes the law. You surprise everyone at the scene as you put the final nail in the other driver’s coffin when you announce you have a Dash-Cam. At this point, I assure you, if the officer could kiss you he/she would...you’ve just trimmed hours off his written investigation.
In the middle of this big love fest, the officer asks if he could see the video. You whip out your cell phone or your ipad and since you have a Black-Vue DR500GW-HD, you log into the app and pull up a beautiful video of the time frame in question. So, contrary to what some of you were saying in the last thread about the importance of having a Dash-Cam, the officer will have absolutely no qualms about sitting in your car, sticking his head in your car or sitting on top of your car as he views the evidence.
There it is...clear as day. You entered the intersection with the yellow and here comes this Bozo from the right. It’s pretty clear...you give a sigh of relief, he gives a sigh of defeat and the officer...well, he’s excited at the thought he’ll now have enough time at the end of his shift to enjoy a 2nd donut...life’s good!!! But wait...what’s this little number in the GPS info? It says 33...oh my...that’s your speed. The officer looks at the speed limit sign across the street...it says 30 MPH.
OK, so here’s where you stand. The officer will complete his investigation. He will suggest you retain your SD card for your insurance company...he has enough info from the video. He will write in his narrative that you presented to him and he personally viewed your Dash-Cam info showing you entered the intersection on a legal yellow...at 33 mph in a 30 MPH zone. He will still show Mr. Bozo was at fault, BUT...by your own evidence, he will state your GPS/DASH-CAM indicates you were exceeding the posted speed limit. On the surface, that makes you partially culpable since Mr. Bozo would argue if you were traveling 3 mph slower, you would not have reached him thus there would not have been a collision.
Since technically, the officer doesn’t know the difference between a Dash-Cam and a jelly donut, he has no way of knowing the accuracy, calibrated date or authenticity of your video. Mr. Bozo’s insurance company will now have a little more teeth, albeit baby teeth, but bite back ability none-the-less. I would suspect they will likely come to an agreement where each insurance company will settle on fixing their own driver’s cars and move on from there...all because your Dash-Cam inadvertently presented the other side with ammo.
Now I would never ever suggest you lie at a traffic accident though many do. What I would suggest is, if you believe you were in the right, say so. If the officer is on the fence or leans in favor of the other driver and he lists you as the primary cause of the accident, don’t sweat it. Remember, officers written traffic investigations is merely a guideline for insurance companies based solely on all the facts he/she had at the time.
What you should do is go home, quickly view your SD Card video. If it clearly shows you in the right, download the video ONLY on your computer. Use your computer’s video viewer program to separate the GPS data from the actual video, copy the video to disc and present the disc to your insurance company. You also have the right to go down to the police station to add an addendum to the original report in the form of a statement. Your statement could simply be you have additional evidence in the form of a video of the accident that you are submitting to the insurance company. Your video will not change the officer’s assessment of who was at fault, however, it is now part of the official written investigation.
Is this an ethical thing to do? You bet it is. Opposing attorneys will always look for any smidgen of evidence to poke holes in your story. A non-highway posted speed limit in California indicates “safe speed for conditions” Driving 33 MPH in a 30 MPH zone is arguably NOT unsafe and you should not have to risk the chance of your insurance premiums going up for driving 3 MPH over the speed limit. Even though technically, you are exceeding the speed limit.
Hopefully this offered a little more insight on the pros and cons of having a Dash-Cam.
A short slightly off-topic story about evidence at an accident scene:
One day I received a radio call to investigate a non injury accident that was holding up rush hour traffic in our very busy downtown area. When I arrived, it was chaotic. A car with 5 overly excited women claimed the 18 wheeler a block further up the hill rear ended their convertible rental car. They ordered the trucker to pull over to await police but the trucker flipped them off and drove around them. He obviously gave it a 2nd thought as he noticed they were writing down his plate, so he stopped a block up the hill.
On occasion, my agency suspends investigating non-injury accidents due to personnel shortages. Instead, we facilitate the exchange of info and suggest drivers contact their respective insurance companies which is what I had planned to do that day.
Curiously, I asked the truck driver if he hit their car, his response was, “These F---ing B-tches were sight seeing and holding up traffic so I hit the air horn and they got pissed. They got out and cursed me out so I drove around them. I stopped up the block when they yelled they are calling the police to say I hit them.
His condescending attitude left me with little choice but to conduct a written investigation with deep down hopes of finding him at fault. With his 2 witnesses inside his truck swearing on everything holy they never even came close to the car and the 5 women swearing he did, I had nothing to go by. The rear bumper was pushed in enough to cause these ladies grief with Budget Rent A Car because they opted out of collision coverage.
After 15 minutes of listening to both sides, I told the ladies not to worry...the trucker was at fault and I would write it up that way. The trucker blew a gasket saying I had no evidence and he would have my job.
I walked the trucker up the block, took out a small white piece of paper and a knife. I scraped a pin-head size bug from his undamaged monster size bumper. We then walked back to the rear of the ladies mustang, bent down and again, with my knife, I scraped an identical dead bug off the back of their bumper-mounted license plate. I told the trucker the only way this dead bug could find his way to the rear bumper of their car is if the ladies drove their car at 60 mph...backwards or...his front bug infested bumper came in contact with their rear license plate. His response was, ”well, maybe I just lightly tapped their bumper, but that was it.” The ladies rejoiced and the truck driver just stood there like the idiot he was. I gave the ladies my business card and told them to have Budget give me a call if there’s a problem.
Two months later, I received a monster sized thank you card from all 5 ladies signed by over 100 kids thanking me for being a police officer...the ladies were grade school teachers.
The reason for this story, other than it was hopefully somewhat entertaining, is evidence at the scene of a traffic accident, no matter what kind, will almost always work.
So, at the scene of a traffic accident, showing an officer a video account of what happened can, without question, help you.
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