I'm just starting to look into dash cams for my daily driver. I figure there might be some of you folks that have one. They seem to be getting pretty common and for good reasons. Lawd knows I spend a lot of time on youtube watching crashes.

Wondering about installation and other info or stories too, if its been helpful in an accident...or not. Things like settings, record time etc. Looks like a lot of choices out there.

 

I have one, mother-in-law bought it for me. Seems a little buggy with not recording loops like it is supposed to. I'll have to get back to you on the model, but it's a Polaroid and probably one to avoid. It will sometimes only record for 7 seconds, then start a new file, instead of running the full 3 minutes or whatever I have it set to. Could be that the memory card is defective and affecting it, because it was working rather well for the better part of a year.

Features to look for:
G-force sensitivity
Motion detection
Park setting (camera will start recording if it detects a bump, so as to *hopefully* catch the person that just hit your parked car)
Sound recording option

 

Been thinking about buying one of these myself. Looking forward to some good feedback.
I like the idea of videos uploading to the cloud so thieves/etc can't just toss it, but monthly fees are a bummer

 

I also thought it would be a good idea to get one. I too watch plenty of crash / road rage videos on YouTube (don't know why since I drive too much anyways).

 

what do the leos use in their patrol cars?

 

I experience this first hand during my daily drive so have no desire to watch it online.

 

I do.
Bought a cheap one about 3 years ago in prep for a long roadtrip. I wanted to film the whole drive then edit/time-compress the vid down to where a cross country drive could be watched in a few minutes !
Here's my installation thread:

https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/thread...llation.17637/

Amazingly, even though it's a cheap model and failure prone, mine is still running strong and with a better SD card I haven't had any issues in a long time.

Have caught:
- Tons of drunks/dimwits/cell-tards/general idiocy
- Giant coyote by my 'hood
- A few close calls
- Deer jumping in front of me (x2 -no hits)
- Couple of red light runners
- Empty flatbed semi sliding into intersection in front of me
- Some exotic cars / interesting vehicles

The cheaper cams are VERY sensitive to what card is used, card quality/perf varies wildly, and cards degrade over time. Cheap cams just stream high volume of data to the card with little error handling. If card can't handle the stream, weirdity occurs.