After seeing several videos of drivers getting out of trouble because they had dashcam footage, I finally bought cameras for both my SUV and my wife's car.She drives about 15 miles each way to work, much of it on the highway, and I'm always thinking about how quickly a normal commute can turn into a mess if there's a crash or some other incident.A lot of the time, these situations come down to your word against someone else's.
Maybe the other driver remembers things differently, or a witness gets an important detail wrong.Maybe nobody else saw what happened at all.A dashcam gives you a record of what actually happened, not another opinion.
In the cases below, that made a big difference.His dashcam helped get a felony hit-and-run charge dismissed The video showed there was more to the story According to KPRC 2, the driver was arrested and charged with felony hit-and-run after a traffic investigator was seriously injured.The constable's office said the driver ignored the investigator's signals, hit him, and then drove away.
Based on their version of events, the driver was facing a pretty serious charge.Then investigators saw dashcam footage from another driver.The video showed the investigator kicking the car before he was injured, and the district attorney's office dismissed the felony charge after reviewing it.
The driver wasn't completely off the hook and was still expected to face a minor misdemeanor for not following the investigator's directions, but that's a very different outcome from a felony hit-and-run case.The insurance scam fell apart when investigators saw the video The other driver backed into her on purpose This one is hard to argue with once you see the footage.According to the video, the woman driving was on a busy New York highway when a silver Honda cut in front of her and caused her to slam on the brakes.
When she managed to stop without hitting the car, the Honda's driver put the car in reverse, accelerated, and backed directly into her.What happened next seemed even more suspicious.Passengers tried to cover the rear window, the driver climbed into the passenger seat, and people got out of the car pretending to be hurt.
The victim still treated it like a normal accident and exchanged information, but when she took the dashcam footage to police, they told her they'd seen similar scams before.Without that video, it could have looked like a simple rear-end collision.Related 3 car tech upgrades saving me money and legal headaches Radar detectors, dash cameras, and usage-based insurance have made a big difference.
Posts By Carl Anthony The witnesses got the license plate wrong, but the dashcam didn't The rear camera caught the detail everyone else missed In this case, the dashcam owner wasn't even the one who got hit.He was pulling into a parking spot in Portland when another driver pulled in front-first trying to steal the parking spot, striking a parked car in the process.Then the offending driver took off.
Several people saw what happened and came over to help, and at least one witness thought they had the license plate.The problem was that the plate they gave police didn't match the vehicle.That's where the dashcam saved the day.
He was able to pull up the footage right there on the spot and show police the actual plate number.Then he sent the video to the owner of the car as evidence for the insurance claim.The five front-facing dashcams he was testing couldn't clearly read the plate as the car sped away at night.
It was the rear camera, which caught the car while it was closer and moving more slowly, that got the plate number the police needed.His dashcam footage helped fight a traffic ticket The video showed his hands were empty This Uber driver was pulled over after an officer claimed to have seen him holding a cell phone while approaching a red light.The driver immediately denied it and pointed out that he had a dashcam recording what happened.
He still got the ticket, but the footage told a very different story.In the video, you can see him driving with nothing in his hands, apparently just scratching his face as he comes up to the light.That's the kind of situation where a dashcam can be worth having even when there isn't a crash.
The officer had one version of what happened, and the driver had another.Instead of having to argue about it on the side of the road, he had video he could take to court.VIOFO A329S 4K 3 Channel Dash Cam Connectivity Type-C Recording Quality 4K front, 2K rear $470 at Amazon Expand Collapse A dashcam is cheap insurance when the story gets complicated None of these drivers expected to need video when they got behind the wheel, but in each case, the footage gave police, insurance companies, or the driver something concrete to work with.
That’s what sold me on having one in each of our cars.A dashcam won’t stop an accident, a scam, or a bad call from happening, but if something does go sideways, having a recording can make it a lot easier to show what really happened.
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