Check your recordings, don't learn the hard way like me

[megapixle]

A week ago my wife was driving the family minivan on the freeway when she was sideswiped by an elderly driver. He left his lane and impacted the van, then as my wife was pulling off to the side he impacted again, all the way off to the shoulder where my wife came to a stop.

I arrived on-scene 15 minutes later to find the other driver telling police my wife left her lane to impact him. Aha! The moment I've been waiting years for, the evidence from my trusty dashcam will exonerate me. So I grab the SD card, plug into the card reader I have in the glovebox just for these occasions, and into my Android phone....

....all to find out my 20 month old G1WH has apparently not recorded anything for the last 3 months. It is dead. Indicator light still illuminates, but screen doesn't turn on and obviously it's not recording.

Fortunately, the good news---an independent witness stayed at the scene and her written statement corroborated my wife's account 100%. The other driver was cited for 'unsafe lane travel' and his insurance accepted liability. Without the witness statement it would have been he said/she said, and I'd likely be on the hook for repairs.

I have a new Mobius that's arriving tomorrow.

Moral of the story: don't be like me; check your footage every now and again.

 

[dash riposki]

Check, format the card, and make sure she understands what blinks when the mobius is operating normally.

 

[Rajagra]

Ouch. An important lesson.

It has parallels with backing up a computer. E.g. you don't have a backup unless you've tested it. You could also argue that a single copy doesn't count as a good backup, you need at least two (i.e. two or more cameras are worth having.)

Generally my dash cam has done well, but the most outrageous incident I saw was lost when pushing the save button caused it to lose the file.

 

[kamkar]

Allways chack up on cameras and the SD card in them, i have a look about every 2-3 weeks, i then check random files recorded and i chek all last files in the recorded driving sessions is okay as i assume its here problems first will show ther ugly face.
After checkup i format card to make sture FAT on the card is in perfect working orden.

I was rear ended in October, dident catch it on my rear camera, but it was my own falut knew allright it had power problems.
But dumbass in 4x4 ramming car behind me into me took full blame, and i had footage from the other cameras in my car.

Dashcams is not fire and forget, but in a good camera the weak spot should be the SD card.

 

[Rajagra]

It's worth deciding if you're doing this for fun or to really cover yourself.
I disliked paying out for a Samsung Pro Plus card, but the cost is OK if you want peace of mind.
Also decent cables and power source are not expensive, so worth getting.

Having said that I had equal reliability from cheaper cards with smaller (32GB) capacity. Better in fact - the camera has failed once with the Pro Plus 64GB in it.
So ask yourself if you really need hours and hours of recording, or just need a record of serious events if/when they happen.

 

[DAP]

Get a second camera, and face it backwards. It doubles your chances of successfully recording something.

 

[kuoh]

This is one of the reasons I swap cards and offload the videos almost daily. I simply plug the card in the pc, start the file sync application and check back later. If there's a problem with the card or it just needs to be reformatted, I'll know about it right away rather than after its too late. With large HDs at less than $50 now, you can archive months of footage for later recovery if you needed to.

KuoH

 

[megapixle]

I should also say, my wife made a blunder with the police officer and told them that we had a dashcam installed and "we have it on video" only to find out we didn't have it on video after all. My advice would be, if you are ever in an accident, don't advertise to the other party or the police that you have a dashcam until you've checked the footage and the footage is in fact favorable to you. Us telling the police we had video footage, and then not having it after all, only served to make the police suspicious that perhaps we did have footage that did not support our version of events and were not willing to share the footage since it was not favorable towards us.

 

[kamkar]

If ppl can overlook my cameras i aint telling no one i have them, not the other part, and not the police if they are on site.

At least not right then and there, but i might share after i have reviewed my footage and analyzed my own legal options.

 

[Module 79L]

And some people think I'm crazy for emptying the card and check the footage every single day...

 

[kamkar]

Thats a bit too much for me with 6 individual cameras in the car. but at least once every month i have had my hands on all the cameras.

Some times i retrive 3 cameras in one go when i have captures somthing extra stupid i really want to expose all i can on youtube.

 

[Module 79L]

Of course it's tricky if you have more than 2 and drive a lot daily, but if you only have one like the OP, it'll seriously make you think about how long you should leave the card unchecked.

 

[russ331]

I wonder whether people who don't bother to check the memory card files on say, a weekly basis, also take a similar approach to checking tyre pressures & fluid levels?

 

[Deleted member 46308]

I wonder whether people who don't bother to check the memory card files on say, a weekly basis, also take a similar approach to checking tyre pressures & fluid levels?

Probably

 

[DuckDuckMoose]

I was just about to post a thread praising my camera for helping me with a hit and run incident and noticed this thread.

In my case, my camera did an admirable job of capturing the other car travelling dead on towards me in my lane. Full video of the incident, and perfect capture of their license plate number.

... However apparently its GPS module completely failed at some point in the past few days or before that, and I have no GPS data at all. Not important for this accident, but I was slightly disappointed as it was a feature I had paid for.

 

[megapixle]

I wonder whether people who don't bother to check the memory card files on say, a weekly basis, also take a similar approach to checking tyre pressures & fluid levels?

I can confirm this to be true.

 

[runtohell121]

I wonder whether people who don't bother to check the memory card files on say, a weekly basis, also take a similar approach to checking tyre pressures & fluid levels?

I think that's how most people are to be honest. Most people just get in the car and drive without checking anything. A dashcam is more of a set and forget type of device for some consumers, same with cars, just drive until there's something wrong (e.g. light comes on) and then get it fixed, etc.

 

[DuckDuckMoose]

I wonder whether people who don't bother to check the memory card files on say, a weekly basis, also take a similar approach to checking tyre pressures & fluid levels?

Probably in general. In my case I'm OCD about actual mechanical functioning and charging of my Volt. With my Dashcam, I just (unwisely) assumed that if I could see it flashing the recording light and going through its start up that it was functioning properly.

From now on I'm going to check out video once a week