– Yes, maybe perhaps a dashcam is a good thing, right?

Somebody breaks into your vehicle.

The problem with dashcams, I will tell you is dashcams.

Lots of people believe that they should get a dashcam and there was a post, can’t call it a tweet anymore, it’s a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

That that didn’t work out for him [Elon Musk], did it?

Does a DashCam Prove Your Innocents

Anyway, there was a post and the truck driver’s like, oh, I wasn’t at fault.

Dash cam proved the, the young woman was inexperienced, blah, blah, blah.

The first problem with dashcams, it’s me against you.

Social driving – I’m perfect and I’m going to get you and I’m going to prove that you are wrong.

That’s the first thing that’s wrong with dashcams because as I’ve told you, it’s a social activity.

Driving is a social activity, it’s social driving.

DashCams Are Watching You Too

I run a dashcam in my car all the time because I have it for recording shorts and helping you and educating you and those types of things, right?

I have watched myself with my dashcam when I’m going through my dashcam footage, blowing red lights, okay?

I’ve seen myself do it.

I get up to the light, the thing, the link, the light’s turning yellow and I charge the light and I am participating in social driving and I run the red light.

So know that dashcams are a double-edged sword.

They’re not only going to prove that you didn’t do anything wrong and the other person was at fault.

That’s not true.

That’s not always true.

It could work against you as well.

Crash Analysis Videos & Their Impact

– As many of you know, some of the work that I do as a consultant, I do crash analysis for personal injury lawyers, number of the cases that I’ve worked on involve transit buses.

All transit buses now have minimum four cameras on them: inside the bus, outside the bus and in the front of the bus.

In almost every case that I’ve worked on, when I have worked for the plaintiff, the cameras from the bus have been used to prove that the transit driver was negligent in his or her duty.

On almost every case.

So, the dashcams are not serving the transit authority well at all.

But there are incidents, obviously, if they have passengers on the vehicle, those types of things that are doing something illegal or something that would jeopardize the safety of other passengers on the vehicle, then I’m sure they work well.

But for the most part, they don’t work in the favor of the transit.

Another case that I worked on involved a cement truck working in a residential area.

The truck rolled away and they had two separate videos of the event from doorbell cameras.

So assume that you were on camera just about everywhere you’re going, dashcams, security footage.

So know that – yes, maybe perhaps a dashcam is a good thing, right?

Somebody breaks into your vehicle.

What is the Video Quality of a DashCam

The problem with dash cams I will tell you is the quality of the dashcam is not very good.

Usually the only time that a dashcam when you can read a license plate on a vehicle is if both vehicles are stopped.

If your vehicle is stopped and the vehicle that you are photographing is also stopped, that’s the only time you can pick up a license plate number.

Most of the time you can’t.

I have a high-end Garmin in my vehicle.

The quality is not very good.

If I’m stopped and the other vehicle is stopped, then yes, I can pick up a license plate.

But otherwise I cannot pick up a license plate.

I recently ordered a dashcam that claimed it was 4K, it’s not 4K, and actually I put it back in the bag and left it on the floor here, sitting beside my desk because I didn’t get back.

I didn’t get it back within the month because I’d ordered it just before I went to Australia.

So, know that dashcams are not going to serve you well in every situation.

Should I have the Audio On For my DashCam

If you have the audio recording on your dashcam, you can leave notes for yourself.

A lot of times I will have to leave notes for myself because I’ll go back and a lot of the traffic incidents that I’m recording happen so quickly that when I go back and try and look at it, sometimes I’ll miss it.

So I’ll have to leave myself an audio note.

So, you’re sitting in the car, you know, talking to your camera to leave yourself audio notes and those types of things are reading license plates, as Tim said, because the quality is not that good.