Would a front camera footage alone work in this case?

[Noam23]

Look at this situation:

Tesla dashcam saves owner from legal trouble after motorcyclist crashes into him

Without Tesla dashcam, the owner could have faced a reckless driving ticket, jail time, and possibly hundreds of thousands in legal costs from the crash.

electrek.co

Let's assume this guy only had the front camera to support him, could this be enough for the police? Of course front camera wouldn't catch the crash directly, but maybe indirectly?

Just bought a front camera only and now having some second thoughts...

 

[DT MI]

Based on the narrative in the story the biker claimed the Tesla swerved in front of him. A 'front camera only' could disprove that depending on the totality of the circumstances and cast doubt on the rest of the biker's claims.

 

[Nigel]

Front camera would only be enough if you could prove the video was from the time of the crash, which might be difficult unless the microphone picked up the impact. If a car hits your rear bumper then you generally see your car bounce/jerk and hear the bang and that is enough proof, but with a motorcycle there quite likely would be nothing to see. Having GPS would help since it would show the location which combined with GPS time could be adequate proof or certainly reasonable doubt against the witness evidence.

There are a number of reasons for having a rear camera, even with this Tesla dashcam we don't know what happened behind to cause the motorcycle to hit us, there are some questions to be answered, maybe we had no tail lights so the motorcyclist didn't see us? A rear camera would have explained it all.

 

[Noam23]

Thanks DT MI,

But in order to use the front camera here, you must know the exact moment of the motorcycle crashing into the car, without actual direct footage of the event... How can you prove the footage you are showing from the front cam is from this event and not something non relevant?

 

[DT MI]

Thanks DT MI,

But in order to use the front camera here, you must know the exact moment of the motorcycle crashing into the car, without actual direct footage of the event... How can you prove the footage you are showing from the front cam is from this event and not something non relevant?

As I said, a front camera only could help but no guarantee. 360 degree coverage with GPS would be the best configuration in all circumstances with front/rear cameras the next best.

 

[kamkar]

Stupid biker trying to blame Tesla owner for his own stupidity.
And if he claimed Tesla swerve / change lane in front of him, the front dashcam will have the car keeping its lane, and it will have a time/date stamp, so unless more similar accidents happened in the same place i cant see how anyone could claim the dashcam footage are from another night / place.

And unless you have the stereo blasting you should also hear the motorcycle hit the car.
So if Tesla owner must prove he dident do a lot, well the biker must do the same, and unless he have a camera too he should be screwed still.
I cant see how someone would argue the footage from the front dashcam would be from another time / date.

I still think a front dashcam alone will be fine in most cases, and i have a hard time imagining the cases where a front camera alone would not be enough to disprove any outrageous claims against you.

Its the " if a tree fall in the forest, and no one are there to see it, do it make a sound when it fall" question.

 

[Nigel]

I cant see how someone would argue the footage from the front dashcam would be from another time / date.

I could claim that the Tesla driver went back an hour later with the timezone adjusted 1 hour and recorded an incident free journey, thumping his door panel as he passed the point of the incident to add the sound effect.

There is nothing in the front video that shows the incident, the motorcyclist or any of his witnesses, so perfectly possible to go back and re-record, you would only get caught out if someone else had a dashcam recording that didn't match up.

The problem here is that there were witnesses, and as often happens the witnesses remember the incident differently to what actually happened, just needs the motorcyclist to say that the Tesla turned into his path and a lot of witnesses who hear him and who didn't see the incident clearly will remember it that way. So unfortunately the Tesla driver does need to prove that he is innocent rather than it being innocent until proven guilty.

 

[TonyM]

I would expect the Tesla date & time to be correct, but it's not uncommon for a standalone single front camera to have a date stamp in 1999 or whatever is the default. Plus many drivers do not update their dashcam clock in time with daylight savings changes. So the police cannot rely on the video time stamp to be correct. TBH that's one of the reasons I make sure I drive with GPS enabled on at least one camera, even if the others (e.g. Mobius) might not maintain the correct time.