Important behaviors we should focus on

[John Sellers]

When you "save" an accident recording, what is the behaviors that is best for individual potential customers like me?

I've sent back two orders for devices because of disappointing behavior. As a consequence, I had a fender bender without a cam that jumped my insurance rates because I had no evidence of the bad behavior of the other driver and was held 100% at fault as a result.

Here are some first hand observations, and I encourage all the vendors who do well in these regards to make it a best practice to state them in the up front device descriptions. Please put your money where your mouth is! Information about some of these potential problems are hard to come by when looking at competitive offerings

#1
Reliability of event reporting. If you think a device is going to capture an unexpected event, does it have a good track record of doing so? I've read reviews on units that can be in non-obvious modes which interfer with recording. And upfront statement that the device is adequately reliable in this regard would be useful.

#2
Others have a problem for which it would be very hard to start a manual emergency recording in time if it isn't automatically initiated before it is too late. For example one unit I sent back.only allowed 2 seconds of pre-event in a separate emergency recording. So if you had to trigger it manually, you only have two seconds to capture the event itself! The minimum guaranteed pre-accident recording should be up front whether the device has extra emergency recording or just looping. Since most looping videos increment at times independent of events so there is no guarantee of pre-accident saving unless the previous loop segment is protected if the current segment is too close to its start. This is important because you may need evidence of what happened just before the event.

#3
This brings up another point. California Law limits pre and post recording times of event videos to 30 seconds each. Many devices have a minimum loop segments of one minute. Also some emergency separate videos record 30 seconds after the event, so if a manual press button recording after the event it will go beyond the 30 seconds limit and strictly speaking, this might mean that loop evidence or the emergency recordings might be thrown out for violating the law. Also it is conceivable that triming off this extra time from the video at least in principle might violate the integrity of the evidence because it was edited by an interested party.
>>>> Understand I'm not a lawyer and my views in this post are only my own common sense observation and not a legal opinion.

#4
Will a recording be saved if external power of the vehicle is suddenly lost. Some devices have a battery or capacitor, and some depend on vehicle power. These are other facts that should be up front along with consequences.

#5
Will night vision either be too dark, or so sensitive to the the license plate light so as to completely wash out the license plate as I have seen in a certain video? This is another fact that should always be made clear.

 

[DAP]

My solution with event recording, is to not bother with it, I never press any buttons to save an event, but instead to get a big enough memory card that I have 18 hours of recording time before the event gets overwritten. The only time event recording matters is parking mode where the car can sit for days.

As far as night video goes, there is currently no camera that does a good job of this. They are either terrible, or bad. None can even claim mediocre yet. Best is the Starvis sensors, but I would still not call them good enough.

 

[John Sellers]

Actually, I personally want to make manual recordings such as the motorcyclist the other day who I watched intentionally drive through a red light from a dead start when the light was already red before he even started moving!

 

[Panzer Platform]

I think it’s possible you are misinterpreting the statute, or I am, or both of us are.
Maybe we need a lawyer to interpret this. Lol

CVC 26708 (13)
(A) A video event recorder with the capability of monitoring driver performance to improve driver safety, which may be mounted in a seven-inch square in the lower corner of the windshield farthest removed from the driver, in a five-inch square in the lower corner of the windshield nearest to the driver and outside of an airbag deployment zone, or in a five-inch square mounted to the center uppermost portion of the interior of the windshield. As used in this section, “video event recorder” means a video recorder that continuously records in a digital loop, recording audio, video, and G-force levels, but saves video only when triggered by an unusual motion or crash or when operated by the driver to monitor driver performance.
(B) A vehicle equipped with a video event recorder shall have a notice posted in a visible location which states that a passenger’s conversation may be recorded.
(C) Video event recorders shall store no more than 30 seconds before and after a triggering event.
(D) The registered owner or lessee of the vehicle may disable the device.
(E) The data recorded to the device is the property of the registered owner or lessee of the vehicle.
(F) When a person is driving for hire as an employee in a vehicle with a video event recorder, the person’s employer shall provide unedited copies of the recordings upon the request of the employee or the employee’s representative. These copies shall be provided free of charge to the employee and within five days of the request.

These are the cameras that monitor a commercial driver to detect “falling asleep at the wheel”.
This 30 second nonsense does not apply to dash cams looking out at the road, (at least not the way I’m reading it).
Here is a link to the regulation;

Law section

-Chuck

 

[Nigel]

These are the cameras that monitor a commercial driver to detect “falling asleep at the wheel”.
This 30 second nonsense does not apply to dash cams looking out at the road, (at least not the way I’m reading it).
Here is a link to the regulation;
Law section

So you can't mount a dashcam on the windshield, unless it is an event recorder?

I guess you need to mount the dashcam on the dash then... or on the bottom of the sensor pod... or on a piece of legally installed tint film?

 

[NARider]

The minimum guaranteed pre-accident recording should be up front whether the device has extra emergency recording or just looping. Since most looping videos increment at times independent of events so there is no guarantee of pre-accident saving unless the previous loop segment is protected if the current segment is too close to its start. This is important because you may need evidence of what happened just before the event.

FYI, Street Guardian has a pretty good approach as described in this post. Unfortunately I haven’t found this info in my owner’s manual.

 

[Vortex Radar]

With a lot of dashcams the pre-record time of a manually triggered emergency recording is often too short. Realistically what I often do it trigger manual recordings simply to make it easier for me to later find the clip later. Then once I go to find the clip, I usually grab the marked clip and the clip just before (plus any other clips before or after as well). As @DAP said, just get a really big memory card so you're not worried about the video file getting overwritten before you get home.

 

[kamkar]

I very much likes Street Guardians approach and saving 2 files, VS others that save 1 file or yet others that save a short buffer + some seconds after.
Personally i do not use any form of automatic event generation while driving ( G-sensor ) but i will on occasion use the event button to lock little stuff i might want to share later on, CUZ i have tried many years to do this by memory but that did not work.
So i just use a plenty large memory card, and today that is 256 GB, this i will of course take out after a serious event, where i might let it record a little after to catch any incriminating evidence. Pretty simple too CUZ anything serious and my car will probably not be driving again anytime soon if ever.

The small fender scraper i had last week, well i dident even bother pressing any buttons, but i did take the memory card out later that day when i got home to retrieve the video.

Regarding button recordings, well i dont go for them very often so it might be a month or 2 later before i retrieve them, and still in the event folder i will find other recordings even more months old, actually compiling a new upload i have to look at the previous to figure out if i have used so and so footage CUZ i sure as hell can not remember it.
I could of course delete old events i have used, but i prefer to not pick files on active memory cards as it have in some cases given people grief,,,,,, which i find strange a system cant even handle a gap in recordings CUZ really all dashcam recordings are nothing but gaps.

 

[Agie]

Have to agree with what has been said by others here - I too have a big enough memory card and on occasion will hit the Event button. That makes things easier to find but I also tend not to have that much trouble just remembering what time the incident occurred, then going back thru the memory card to find it.

Infinitely easier these days with wifi dashcams too, as can not long after the incident, take out the phone and find & download the footage that way.