When Dash cams were a new phenomenon, people marvelled at how drivers managed to record footage on their smartphones of meteorites in Russia, an aircraft crashing into a river in Taiwan and wheels coming off vehicles on the motorway, while at the same time driving their car. When informed that they were filmed by dash cams, people had no idea what they were.

A dash cam is there to take footage of the unexpected, however early adopters had the idea they enabled the recording of one’s journey down Route 66. The trouble with this concept is that the footage is overwritten as you drive, with incidents stored in a separate folder, triggered by impact detection, to save against being erased by the loop recording. I can assure you, there is nothing more boring, and sometimes nausea inducing, than watching dash cam footage, especially in this age of streamed on demand entertainment.

Now this overwriting feature is extremely important when it comes to the legality of dash cams in certain countries, one of which is Spain. This has been highlighted by the following instance of a home surveillance system being used in a car. The following article incorrectly calls this a dash cam: https://bit.ly/3flVgkv

As an aside, it is also worth noting that the image used in the article is also a bad example, as the video is playing and the location on the windscreen obstructs the driver’s field of view, which are both illegal in the UK. All but one of Thinkware’s dash cams don’t have a screen, allowing them to be discretely mounted behind the rear-view mirror, avoiding any distraction of the driver.

Here is an article that makes the distinction and outlines the case that dash cams are in fact legal as long as the footage isn’t uploaded to social media and it can be used as evidence when there has been an accident: https://bit.ly/3kP4HKn

We all think we’re great drivers and the unexpected won’t happen to us, but accidents do happen, and a dash cam can save a considerable amount of grief by being your personal expert witness, when all other witnesses have run for cover. As soon as there is an element of doubt about an incident, you could be in for a protracted court case, which induces anxiety and anger, all of which can be avoided by having a dash cam. The easiest person to sell a dash cam to is someone who has just had an accident, as their personal experience exposes the need.

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