There's some comparison with SatNav's to be sure, but those are directly and commonly useful while dashcams are rarely used for their designed purpose and only directly helpful to the unlucky souls involved in a crash.
People will spend freely on things they often use but not on things they believe they do not think that they need. If the public doesn't take to factory-installed cams on their own, we might see it become a requirement like the US car computers do now with vehicle data being saved in the time leading up to a crash. It might also be pushed along by the insurance companies like it has in Russia
I'm sure it varies elsewhere but in the US there is almost no market for a truly basic car so almost none are built or sold. Even the cheapest models have power windows, A/C, rear-window de-icers, and all manner of other gadgets which are not critical to operating a vehicle safely and comfortably. Added up, all that stuff costs thousands, not the couple hundred (or less) that a comprehensive cam system would cost the manufacturer. And with the technology advancing as it is, the costs for something basic will drop making it senseless to not add it to every car here.
One of the problems with technology is that due to it's 'glamour' appeal, the people buy it without truly considering it's drawbacks. In my old van I never need to take my eyes off the road to do anything such as adjusting the radio or operating the defroster, lights, and wipers. All the controls are simple and operable by feel alone. The dashlights can be set as low as you want them without losing any ability to read any of the needed instruments. To my way of thinking this is a far better system than what newer vehicles have where you have to look at a touch-screen or have controls which must be seen to operate them correctly or a LCD display that illuminates far more than is necessary just because it looks better that way.
A good analogy here is to compare today's airplanes with those in the past. It once took only a stick, rudder pedals, and a few instruments to fly a plane and nearly anybody could get the hang of basic flying in minutes. Now planes are so complex that it takes many hours of intense training just to learn what you need to know before you even begin to consider what it takes to actually fly the plane. The worst are commercial airliners which are so complex that almost all of the pilot's attention has to go to deciphering what the plane is trying to do and compensate for that instead of flying. And the airlines not allowing manual flight time as a cost-cutting measure means that all the pilots are inexperienced at actually flying the plane should those complex systems fail (which at last parts of them very often do
) so that in a worst-case scenario you are worse off than you've ever been before.
Driving a car safely is simple and relatively easy as long as what it takes to do that remains equally simple. The more complexity you add the less easy it becomes to drive safely and the more likely it becomes that you will be in a crash because someone was not able to pay attention to their driving because of the car's needlessly over-complex design. Women gesture a lot by their nature and BMW is going to find that they are fighting a losing battle with nature through trying to increase simplicity by making it even more complex to learn and use. More crashes will occur when people inadvertently change a setting then need to look away from the road to rectify that. IMHO it more than one step in the wrong direction- it's a complete misunderstanding of what they are doing.
Phil
Far better to simply reduce complexity to a minimum at the start