I'm sure we've had a thread on this already, but it's now my turn. After: Having had to pay for a 'Motorway Awareness' course for driving in a closed lane after passing an obstruction (it was either that or get flattened by an absolute w@nker of a tailgating bus driver) Being the proud owner of a new second-hand car Having a shouting match with some useless chavette yesterday who decided I was taking too many milliseconds to set off after a light was turning green, sped around me and almost caused a severe crash at a busy crossroads I've decided to purchase a dashcam as I'm sure you're all aware, the UK roads are becoming increasingly filled with See You Next Tuesdays who seem to have no concept of driving with consideration for other people. Desired features: Front and rear views (doesn't necessarily have to have two separate units) Automatic erasing of oldest footage and replacing with new (probably standard) Starts when the car starts Not fiddly Be non intrusive, and not require wires all over the place Huge battery life with some sort of easily readable battery meter that lets me know if it needs charging Not make my car a tempting target for some little scrote who may decide to smash a window in to steal it to fund his drugs habit Have at it!
Nextbase (whichever model fits budget), hardwired to the fusebox, no batteries to worry about, although if you get one with bump detection and leave it turned on you always run the risk of flattening your car battery.
I was about to recommend the same, Nextbase have been good for everyone in my family who has one. Did the same as mrlongbeard said above, easy to do, only about 2 inches of visible wire but in a place you have to look hard to see. The 222 was enough for me and I don't have a rear one so not sure about that side of things but a quick look on their site suggests you will need at least the 322. I didn't get those as I was more concerned with showing I was not the cause of anything and the front has been enough for that and also I don't like the idea of gps or wifi tracking me in my car, and Alexa is definitely out.
I think it's rather selfish of you to have wasted crucial milliseconds of her precious time that she needed to get to her dealer
Having dash cam since around 2015, I'm going to say you don't want one with battery. You want ones with super-capacitors. Reason is, for non-intrusive and starts when the car starts, you'll want to wire it into the fuse box or to the 12v cig-socket, where power flows when the car is turned on. Then run the wire up the A pillar to the dashcam. By doing that, you basically don't need a battery. Under the sun, temperature could reach over 60c. No battery is going to survive that kind of torture. When it dies, some times it would cut off before dash-cam is safely shutdown, corrupting the last file. I'm a fan of tiny screen-less wifi dashcam that uses wifi to set up and never need touch ever again. Can be completely hidden behind the camera. They are pretty much all made equal, so just pick a feature-set that you like.
So, after attending my Motorway Awareness course and informing the presenter that the change I would be making would be to get a dashcam so that next time I had the evidence to support my version of events (which he wasn't expecting as an answer), I purchased this last weekend: After a lot of swearing and accidentally pressing the car horn a few times, I managed to install the thing with a good job of hiding the wires, though I'm pretty sure the cover over the rear view mirror isn't back quite right. I haven't hardwired anything - it's connected to a hidden 12V socket in the 'arm rest thing' between the driver and passenger seats. Though a mm shorter and it wouldn't have made it. It's strapped to my rear view mirror and fortunately the display glass is reflective enough to function as a traditional mirror in most cases - I'm still getting used to focussing on the screen itself for rear view. Anyway, one week in and I'm happy so far. It's quite handy for reverse parking as it sees more of the downward angle. Last thing to do is replace the included 32GB microSD card with something a bit more substantial (probably 256GB from my soon to be retired smartphone) as the 32GB card only stores ~3.5 hours of footage at full resolution, and I regularly do journeys that can be in excess of that.
I posted a 64 minute video of me driving around my local town while I was running errands. Just over 200k views
I can see it being useful if you have a problem part-way through a long drive, as you don't have to faff around trying to extract the relevant footage at the side of the road and neither do you have to pull the microSD and then not have a working dashcam for the remainder of the journey. And given how much a name-brand 256GB microSD costs these days...
S'why dash cams have a protect button, press it and the file (3 - 5 minutes) gets protected and moved to a separate folder, easier to find at the end of the journey and can't be overwritten
What @Gareth Halfacree says. Also might at a stretch keep anything that happened a few drives ago just in case.
This is what I was thinking, quick tap of the button if anything happens. That way you've got a short clip protected until the card ends up full of other "protected" clips, so unless @Pete J's going to turn into an adenoidal dashcam ****** you should be fine
I went through a phase of being addicted to those videos. Quite funny how half the time it was the guy/gal with the dashcam who was at fault.
The early ones were great, just compilations of fantastic British swearing. Now it's all just people making slight mistakes on roundabouts and the cammer trying to ram them to prove they had "right of way".
There's a mini roundabout near me and even when you legitimately enter it you still get someone flying onto it at eleventy miles an hour with the MY RIGHT OF WAY attitude because GIVE WAY TO THE RIGHT. I am thinking of getting a dashcam though because the driving 'round these parts leaves a lot to be desired.
On the way to work, there's an entrance onto a roundabout where the entrance to the right is comparatively fast moving. Problem is, even at 0600, 0630ish you get people screaming up to it and beeping at people trying to get out.
Thought I'd give a little update to this thread after reading this article (nothing to do with me): Police sting operation captures motorcyclist speeding at 80mph in 30 zone A few weeks/months ago, my daily commute (at 0430-0520 in the morning) was suddenly made a LOT more irritating by an Audi A4 driver that took to blasting around country lanes at 80+mph, tailgating, overtaking around blind corners, more than one car at a time. He (definitely a he, no offence to the fairer sex, but I've NEVER seen a woman drive like that) would overtake around the blind corners and immediately slam on his brakes (having misjudged the speed he was going at), causing the vehicles(s) behind to have to brake hard. I have NEVER seen such inconsiderate and dangerous driving. Anyway, after a little bit of advice from our friendly plod @Gunsmith , I submitted footage to the police online. Within a few days, I noticed a patrol car was driving up and down, occasionally also parked in a layby. I have not seen the "silly man" since - I assume owing to a ban, or my preferred option, smashing into a tree and spent several agonising minutes burning to death, without affecting anyone else (but I'm a vindictive sort apparently).
