Hit and Run on a Brand New 2019 Mazda 3

RavenManiac

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Location
Williamsburg, Virginia
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Dash Cam
Viofo A129 Duo, mini 0806 (RIP)
I am so totally pissed. Last night, somebody backed into my son's 2019 Mazda 3 and trashed the bumper. He's a senior at James Madison University in Virginia. The police have been contacted, but this apartment complex has no video surveillance. The worse part is he was supposed to come home this past weekend so I could install a brand new A129 Duo that's been here for the past two weeks. Unfortunately, he decided to delay his visit until this weekend.

If anyone needs a reason to purchase a dashcam with parking mode, this is it. :(
 

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sorry to hear about this, it always is so sad to see a nice car damaged while its parked especially a brand new one. Terrible feeling and you're right this is perfect reason to have a dahscam that has a good parking mode feature especially with the buffering feature. Hope the new car gets fixed like new fast. good luck.
 
Thanks, I appreciate your post. And the new A129 is definitely being installed this weekend. :)
 
That's unfortunate.. :/
 
Rats :mad:

Look fairly high that hit, i bet it was made by a truck.
 
Look fairly high that hit, i bet it was made by a truck.

Yes, State Farm believes it was a truck too. They think it may have been the trailer hitch on the back of a pickup. It would be nice if the police would investigate this, but my son got the impression that they really didn't care. :(
 
College aged kids often act irresponsibly and then lie to cover their tracks. There are excellent reasons why auto insurance rates are higher for them, especially males. Think back to your own time at that age and the kind of things you found your friends or yourself getting into. Of course the car may very well have been parked, but... he might just have backed into something himself. Only you will be able to decide which is more likely...

Perhaps after you get the A129 installed, you may occasionally want to view how responsibly or irresponsibly your son is choosing to drive -- if only for his own well being. So many young drivers are killed in vehicle accidents every year. Here is a link to the mortality statistics at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety:
https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/teenagers
 
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College aged kids often act irresponsibly and then lie to cover their tracks. There are excellent reasons why auto insurance rates are higher for them, especially males. Think back to your own time at that age and the kind of things you found your friends or yourself getting into. Of course the car may very well have been parked, but... he might just have backed into something himself. Only you will be able to decide which is more likely...

I have three kids and while I often catch the other two in lies from time to time, this one almost never lies. I'm pretty sure he would have told me if he had done it. Plus, he was more upset than me. In fact, he thinks he knows who did it and was going to confront the guy, but I recommended that he didn't. The last thing we need is for this thing to escalate. Besides, we don't have any proof.
 
Even if the A129 had been installed prior to the hit and run, if the vehicle that hit his car did so from the front, which doesn't have an illuminated license plate, you wonder if the A129 would have been able to capture the license plate number with just street lights.
 
Even if the A129 had been installed prior to the hit and run, if the vehicle that hit his car did so from the front, which doesn't have an illuminated license plate, you wonder if the A129 would have been able to capture the license plate number with just street lights.

And also, even a video recording taken from the perspective of inside the car which successfully captures the relevant details of the other vehicle, does not guarantee adequate proof that the claimed damage was not already present before the recorded incident and then only present afterward because it would be out of frame. Most people will probably admit responsibility after being confronted with a video recording of them doing what they did, and perhaps especially so when confronted by 'authority' figures, but if they still deny it and no other evidence is available then you're possibly stuck in the very same place that you are now.

The real value in a dashcam is being able to prove another driver was responsible for a major accident involving injuries and/or fatalities, which might levy substantial liabilities upon you otherwise. And for parking mode to catch everything you're hoping for, you'll probably also need to install an auxiliary power source because a standard car battery simply can not supply enough power for continuous dashcam use -- which of course is why the A129 hardwire kit includes a low voltage cut-off circuit. (At some point the power supply will turn the camera off so you can start your car when you return.)
 
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You've made some really good points. I hadn't given much thought to an auxiliary power source, but given the circumstances perhaps I should. Which auxiliary power source works well with the A129?
 
I would suggest you seek that specific advice from others in the forum, though from what I understand one of the better and safer ways to go is with a LiFePO4 or similar battery system, because Lithium Ion batteries don't tend to like temperature extremes. (Think about all those news reports you've likely seen about cell phones up in flames, electric scooters exploding, and the like.) Ask the others with personal experience about Cellink and Blackvue versions, and probably many other options. The information you need may already be posted in various threads here. (I haven't checked.)
 
Actually, I just checked amazon.com and those batteries are expensive. I think I'll stick with the Viofo HK3 cut-off switch for now. If Viofo can get its new buffered parking mode firmware to work I would be a very happy camper. :)
 
I'm not sure how much more battery life to expect from a buffered parking mode, but I'm sure someone here will eventually post the relevant power usage data. Upon first glance, it seems the only energy saved will be not having to write to the memory card until necessary. Does anyone reading this know how much power that takes relative to operating the other parts of the camera that must remain on in buffered parking mode?
 
Last week, we received the estimate for the damage to my son's Mazda 3. It came to a whopping $979.50. Thankfully, we have great insurance so it won't cost us anything. I still can't believe the balls on some people. I seriously could not drive away knowing I did that to somebody else's property, especially a brand new car. I'd love to see how karma pays the offender back. :)
 
Last week, we received the estimate for the damage to my son's Mazda 3. It came to a whopping $979.50. Thankfully, we have great insurance so it won't cost us anything. I still can't believe the balls on some people. I seriously could not drive away knowing I did that to somebody else's property, especially a brand new car. I'd love to see how karma pays the offender back. :)
Is that just for 1 new piece of plastic? Doesn't look like it needs more.

Presumably they are available pre-painted.
 
Last week, we received the estimate for the damage to my son's Mazda 3. It came to a whopping $979.50. Thankfully, we have great insurance so it won't cost us anything. I still can't believe the balls on some people. I seriously could not drive away knowing I did that to somebody else's property, especially a brand new car. I'd love to see how karma pays the offender back. :)

What will likely happen is that some time after his having damaged your car has faded from his memory, his car will one day similarly be damaged while parked and he will complain about whoever did it and hope that karma catches up to that person. I think we mostly expect karma to operate in some sort of circular fashion, but I envision it to be more like neutrons firing out randomly from the nuclei of enough uranium 235 atoms to sustain a fission chain reaction -- into an infinite number of directions indiscriminately hitting anything and everything in their paths. He'll eventually get hit, but so will you again, and also me.

Anyway, karma was probably not really what you wanted anyway -- I would want acknowledgement, apology, and compensation -- but would settle for justice helped brought about by video recording evidence and then compensation, which is one of the reasons we are all installing dashcams these days when personal responsibility is more often becoming considered a relic of the past.
 
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Is that just for 1 new piece of plastic? Doesn't look like it needs more.

Presumably they are available pre-painted.

Yes, it's just the bumper. I too thought the bumpers were pre-painted, as that's how Honda does it, but unfortunately, they are not.
 
Anyway, karma was probably not really what you wanted anyway -- I would want acknowledgement, apology, and compensation -- but would settle for justice helped brought about by video recording evidence and then compensation, which is one of the reasons we are all installing dashcams these days when personal responsibility is more often becoming considered a relic of the past.

All I want is the same level of courtesy and respect that I would have extended had I run into somebody else's car. Unfortunately, I think this is more of a problem with today's society. Some people are simply unwilling to take responsibility for their actions or simply don't care about other people or their property.
 
You guys are NOT going to believe this. It's been 10 days since the first hit-and-run on my son's brand new Mazda 3 and now there's a second. What really has me pissed off is that the A129 Duo was on and in Event Detection mode using the new v1.7 firmware and it didn't capture anything. The police believe that somebody is targeting my son's car, but nobody knows why.

Unbelievable. I was hoping to nail this SOB.
 

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