DashCam Thread

[Furry_DeLorean]

I got a dashcam in my daily driver. It once recorded a big puff of smoke from a big rig almost rear-ending a car. Other than that nothing dramatic.

[DL4567]

This article explains it pretty well. It seems that the abundance of dash cams isn't the #1 reason there are so many of these videos, it's mostly that Russia really is shitty, and that's why there are so many dashcams -- people protecting themselves from all the shittyness. Accident fraud and bad drivers are extremely common, and the poor road conditions don't help.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/20...paign=20121210

[Mark D]

Russian dash cam crash videos are one of those Youtube rabbit holes you can fall down pretty easily.... I was watching a few last week and looked at the clock and 2 hours had gone by.

The abundance of crappy drivers there seems to be the reason why so many people have dash cams installed. If I was living over there I'd definitely want one. Even driving around here in the US I've had my share of crazy things happen where I wished I would have caught it on camera.

[ALEXAKOS]

This is one of the funniest I have seen!
(no accident involved)
Smart ass payback!

[ALEXAKOS]

and a few more for ya Mouse

Notice the pedestrian shoot at the bully LADA driver



Oh... and do a wheel escape count! hahahahah

[Dangermouse]

I wonder which state will lead the pack

Looks like Ontario takes an early lead



Balloons are a nice touch. I must start carry some in the trunk for added points

[Farrar]

That's a rear airbag system, not balloons. :P

[Farrar]

I just got my dashcam (via eBay from China). It's a model 207GS, the GS standing for "G Sensor." It also has a motion sensor. I wonder how sensitive the motion sensor is -- I work at a university, and there are always people, cats, birds, and such moving around near the lot where I park. Anyway, I'll go make a little test of it and post the results here later. For $70, I'm not sure what to expect...

I will not test the "G Sensor."

One quibble: there was no protective cover on the camera lens, so the first thing I did was get my tumbprint on it when I took it out of the package.

[Farrar]

Here's a little bit of my first drive with the camera on.



The h264 encoding means that it looks pretty good on my computer, but looks pretty bad once it gets re-encoded by YouTube.

One thing I noticed when I went through the setup menu later is that there's a "light frequency" setting. I changed it from 50Hz to 60Hz. I'll see if that makes any difference.

(I also set the date and time. Heh.)

The field of vision it captures is pretty good. I mounted it just beneath and to the left of my rear-view mirror. Unfortunately, there are times when the glare is pretty bad, but all in all I'd say it's fine for a $70 unit off of eBay.

[Chris4099]

The following happened to me a few days ago. While I didn't hit the person, it shows how my DashCam could have shown I was going below the speed limit and how they darted out from behind a car with minimal visibility.



My camera is mounted behind the rear view mirror, so I don't really see it there while driving. It's also wired to a switched 12V source, so it only records while I drive. If there is any "event" due to sudden G forces (the quick stop here triggered it), it will tag the video when I do a playback. It's also GPS enabled, so when I play it back using their viewer, it notes my location on a Google map.

One day I'll get around to mounting one on my D, but since it's not a daily driver, it's less critical.