Dash cam options with reversing camera?

kogling

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There are some dashcams with that function, mostly the mirror kind.
But there are several drawbacks.
1: These "snap" onto your existing mirror ( not legal over here in Denmark )
2: As they snap on like that they are prone to vibrations, most stalks holding mirrors arnt exactly strong, so day to day driving might be wobbly footage.
3: A true reversing camera most often sit down low on the back of the car, if you have a sedan and mount the camera up high on the rear window then the boot will block some of the view, you will not have 0 - 1-2 M coverage for sure. if you drive a little hatchaback or something else that have a flat rear you might be good anyway.

You are better off buying a true reversing camera + little LCD screen, they are actually pretty cheap, cheaper than what it will cost to get a professional to install it.

I think if you search with "reversing camera" in here you will find numerous threads where this have been talked over before.

Other dashcams that have a front and rear camera, well they dont have the guide / distance lines and flipped footage, and most often theu have a very little LCD screen, far too small to reverse by.
 
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For well over a century, people have been reversing using their eyes and mirrors which allow them to see the big picture, why do you need a camera and a small screen to do it?

Are you going to see the little kid that is about to run between your car and the car you are reversing towards in time when the image you are using only covers a small area behind your vehicle?

Parking sensors with audible warnings make sense, they add additional information to your world view rather than removing most of it.

"New driver so would like a dash camera and reversing camera for obvious reasons."
What are the "obvious reasons"? What is obvious to a new driver, or someone only experienced in driving simulators, may not be correct...
 
i can't recommend ANY wifi backup camera that requires your mobile device as a monitor. they're way too finicky to create a fast and reliable connection every time you need it.

i do however have a wireless backup camera and LCD kit made by auto-vox in our baby mobile. when it's on sale it's about $50 US. it does introduce some digital signal noise but it has never failed to quickly connect and give me a useable picture since I've installed it.

in my fiat, i have a pyle LCD rearview mirror that's hardwired to a backup camera. this is reliable as well and won't have any digital noise since it doesn't use RF signals.

like everyone suggests here, there's just too much compromise with an all-in-one solution.
 
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no i don’t find the 4” screen too small as i only look at it when i’m already in tight quarters. i still turn my neck and use my mirrors to get into a spot then use the screen to get in close. i’ve been driving for 21 years but i can appreciate technology helping out when current cars are getting higher beltlines and more terrible rearward visibility.
 
and I'm not sure where I indicated as such
You didn't really indicate why you need it or what it will be used for, which is why I asked for the explanation. I wondered if maybe you were disabled and need it to see where you are unable to see, which would require a different camera to what abarth requires, ie a reversing camera rather than a parking camera.

to aid in gauging the perception of appropiate car spaces and to help speed up my experience in driving without such accidents. I would presume a lot of people reverse in to walls, clip cars and more every day due to wrongly judging sizes or general lack of experience.

Added to that, my work wants me to start driving their vans, so really need to nail my spacial awareness as quickly as possible due to the sheer size of the vehical involved and unfortunately, driving around looking for a clear spot with no nearby vehicals 'to be safe' doesn't quite cut it in a working enviroment.
A small 2 dimensional screen showing a small part of the 360 degree field of view is not going to be much help for general reversing, and one showing 360 degrees would have too little detail. You need practice in turning your neck and looking at the big 3D picture and building a mental map of where everything is. For parking in tight spaces, cameras and ultrasonic parking sensors can help, but you still need to use your eyes to spot all the obstacles and understand the 3D sizes of the objects and spaces.

Actually, I don't think many people do reverse into walls, clip cars etc. Most of the parking lot accidents seem to be when people are parked and they open their doors into the car alongside them! That is probably followed by people who accelerated when they intended to brake! There are a few people who regularly use their bumpers to judge distances, but the car manufacturers are required by law to produce bumpers that do not fall apart in minor parking lot bumps - as long as your impact into a wall or someone else's bumper is under 3mph then you should be OK.

That said, there is a market for this type of product and I haven't seen any cases of them being the cause of an accident. People using phones, messing about with their radios /songs, speeding among a plathora of other issues seem far more pressing than a reversing camera. I would have also thought one wanting to have a dash cam is generally an indication of wanting to drive correctly /better as it is just as much evidence against you as it is for you..
You can't pass responsibility to the camera, the driver is always responsible, so if a driver uses a camera and causes an accident, the camera will never be reported as being the cause.

A coleague who has driven for 10 years recently scratched the side of a brand new van reversing against a concrete pillar and he certainly had mirrors? I'm sure you don't want that to be your car, yet it happens all the time.
Would a camera have helped? Almost certainly not, maybe he should have got out of his seat and walked around the van to check where all the concrete pillars where before reversing into them.
In terms of the "kid" example you presented, compared to how you are supposed to reverse and how most expierenced drivers reverse (that I've seen), the sheer difference in speed alone I would be inclined to say unless this kid is a new born baby that was placed under my wheels, they'd be fine even if I did glue my eyes to the reversing camera!
Going too slowly isn't good, it makes it more difficult to maintain an accurate mental map of where everything is and provides more time for what you can't see to change, such as the kitten walking behind your wheel. Our short term memory only lasts a few seconds, so if I'm reversing up a single track road then I prefer to reverse at 20mph than 5mph since then I have 4x more road in my short term memory map, so I know what is happening both behind and in front of the car instead of behind and only half way along the car, if I'm only doing 2mph then I have to keep stopping to check all around instead of looking where I'm going, if I'm doing 20mph then I can just drive.

Most people, even if they had full 360 degree cameras, would not use the cameras other than to check their blind spots - the places they can't otherwise see. And for a normal car the mirrors should cover most of the blind spots that can't be seen by turning your neck. For a van/truck without a rear view mirror then a "mirror cam" so that they can see directly behind is useful, although drivers have been doing perfectly well without them for many years!
 
A reversing cam may be a great help with a large van, but most of all you need the spatial awareness of it, and that cam won't help you there. Got my first van over 25 years ago, and at this point I'm sure I have more miles driving vans and pick-ups than cars. And I've never had a reversing cam. In fact all Ihave now is my outside mirrors and that's all you really need TBH.

Rule #1 is to have spot mirrors and to learn to use them well; the bigger the better. No good for judging distance but they can show you a lot which you need to be aware of. Rule #2 is to look at everything as you approach where you're going to back into, note where it all is, and think of how it may affect you. Especially note anything moving. All this long before you've stopped while you can see it all well. Rule #3 is that you watch both mirrors when you begin backing and if you don't see everything in your mirrors that you expected to see, you stop until you can find it visually. Pedestrians are often oblivious to the world around them and as often as not I see them through the windows because they've passed beyond the coverage of my mirrors but aren't quite where I can see them through my windows yet. Don't fixate on one, keep checking the other mirror for new moving obstacles. Rule #4 is that until you learn intuitively where the back bumper is you stop early, get out and see what room you have, then get in and move more. Hint: It's often easier to judge that distance you saw by looking straight out and down through your driver's window, but you've still got to look for anything behind you when you're moving on both sides. The last hint I got from truckers who told me that you judge that last bit of distance and alignment to the loading dock through your driver's side mirror only, and you do that from the same body position every time.

Once you get used to them, you will find your usual parking spots often have something you can visually align with in your mirrors. Here at home I have a fencepost on my passenger side with a fence along the drivers side. Once I'm safely in the driveway with nothing seen behind me I watch only that fencepost, because there's nothing coming through the fence on the other side so I can safely forget about it. As long as my fencepost is in the right place in my passenger mirror I won't hit anything on the other side and I can back in as fast as I could pull in going forwards. After awhile you'll develop the habit of looking for something like my fencepost while performing Rule #2. Some crafty people even go so far as to creating their own 'target' by marking their favorite parking spots with a dot of spray paint, something small but easily seen attached to a fence or wall or ground, etc. It's far easier to look and find that target to align with which gives you more time to look at everything else. And expect to bump into something as you learn- everybody does. That's how we all learn though not everyone will admit to it :rolleyes::p;) Just be sure it's cheap or soft or both :LOL:

Phil
 
...Some crafty people even go so far as to creating their own 'target' by marking their favorite parking spots with a dot of spray paint, something small but easily seen attached to a fence or wall or ground, etc. It's far easier to look and find that target to align with which gives you more time to look at everything else. And expect to bump into something as you learn- everybody does. That's how we all learn though not everyone will admit to it :rolleyes::p;) Just be sure it's cheap or soft or both :LOL:

Phil
At home, I have a rubber (recycled tire) playground tile, I just back up until the rear tire hits it, then the car is always positioned withing a few mm.
If you are having difficulty learning the length of your vehicle you could take one with you, if you want to reverse another 5' then put it down 5' behind a wheel.
 
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I'm sure you're not reversing into a bay at 20mph.
You make it sound difficult! You are entitled to take your time, especially if you need to in order to be safe. Most people will happily wait, ignore the impatient.

Some people reverse park at 20mph, I normally slow down a bit to park. With a bit of practice:


Of course it helps to have a car where you can see the corners, vans tend to be somewhat easier in that respect.
 
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It is true many head units of the media center type with a 7" screen have inputs for something like a reversing camera, even some factory systems support that though some dont take just any analog camera, my old win CE china head unit have input for 2 cameras.
But i dont think you could record those signals, and really you would not like to as they mostly have the ground right behind your car in frame, which are not what you would like a dashcam to have.
Also the reversing cameras are most often low resolution like the kind of TV a guy in my age use to see as a kid.
For reversing it will be fine but for dashcam use it is worthless, cuz in a dashcam you do not want anything under 1080p resolution.
I was about to have a true reversing camera sent to me for testing, but then i found out the parts of the wire harness for my cheap head unit are now gone. :censored:
And while a 7" LCD screen are also cheap then i am not going to put one of those in my car too, but i would like to upgrade mu head unit to a newer Android one, just have other financial priorities right now, and as a early retired Dane on a pension i cant deviate from those plans.
Or i could, but after a lifetime of messed up personal finances i am not going to go back to that.
 
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