A few weeks ago i asked for help in finding a suitable incar camera following an accident I experienced whilst stationary & a young girls flying along miss judging a gap. Disappointed by the ins companies decision to take a 50/50 approach due to no witnesses I decided I am not going to get caught again. I purchased a road hawk from www.roadhawk.co.uk/
Service was excellent & received product next day, fitting was fine, took a little while to hide all the cabling but thats all hidden now.
Drove 350 miles on Saturday & checked all the stored files today. Quality very good even the night driving came out in an acceptable state.
Almost needed it as a car pulled out a side turning without looking & whilst my wife was driving she missed the car by about 4 ft!.
Thank you for the help that was offered & I shall now purchase another for my daughter.
i739.photobucket.com/albums/xx33/injectiondoc/road...g
{Link added in at OP's request}
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 29/11/2009 at 20:31
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Definitely useful, although a bit pricey for what it is if you ask me. I know someone who achieves the same sort of thing by using their mobile phone, not sure how they mounted it in the car though.
Can you take photos of the interior of your car with this camera installed? Did you choose to have it hard wired into the ignition or just choose to go with the cable leading to the 12V socket?
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Definitely useful, although a bit pricey for what it is if you ask me. I know someone who achieves the same sort of thing by using their mobile phone <<
Have you looked at the image quality, GPS tracking and datalogging?
Any mobile that can do that will cost twice as much and be ripe for nicking if you forgot to remove it.
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Well obviously a mobile phone isn't as good, I never said it is. But the newer mobile phones are definitely getting better in terms of camera quality.
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Interesting idea, but the big question has to be is it admissible as evidence?
How will an interested party (insurance, police etc) get access to the video?
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i have hardwired it. You can purchase a camera that cover 340 degree including the interior but a lot more expensive. I have spoken to the ins company & can be used as evidence. With GPS etc who can argue.Very easy to dwon load a file from the camera SD card & send to an INS company.
I think its very good value when you think of the stress it will reduce if involved in an accident.
Cost me £199.99 all in. My excess is £400 so for me its good value. Its very small & tucked out the way so not really visible.
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Interesting idea but the big question has to be is it admissible as evidence? How will an interested party (insurance police etc) get access to the video?
As I usually point out in these digital camera discussions, I'm less bothered about whether it's admissable in a court of law, rather more bothered about using it with an insurance company in a alleged 'knock for knock' situation.
In terms of the mobile phone idea this had occured to me, given the size of memory cards thes edays you could get an awful lot of video on a phone, doesn't have to be super quality, how about strapping it to the sun visor with a couple of eleastic bands. Maybe there's an app for that ....
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I'm interested in this, but I worry they will be attractive to thieves.
As I see it, permanently wiring them in is the best way to go. Setting them up for each trip and plugging in to the cigarette lighter socket means it will get forgotten sometimes, and sod's law says that will be the time that it will be needed.
But if it's permanently wired in and fixed on top of the dashboard, I wonder if some scrote would be likely to smash the side window to steal it. I know this was a problem with tom-toms, at least in the early days when they were worth a few hundred pounds.
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I have to say, this is complete overkill, and smacks of paranoia.
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"I'm interested in this, but I worry they will be attractive to thieves."
Not mounted on dash, very small & i have it tucked up under the dark strip of the screen. Its not apparent. easily unplugs from the unit & dismounts.
A family member who is in charge of fleet vehicles, ( in excess of 1000) uses these as evidence when required against people claiming they have been hit by a company vehicle when they haven't & so far its 100% success rate. As they say a camera never lies.
My insurance company would of accepted it as evidence in my case. i spoke to their legal department. It would of saved me my excess & reduction in NCB.
Well worth it & defiantly not overkill or paranoia
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For a fleet, where they rarely insure fullly comprehensive, they make perfect economic and operational sense.
For an individual private motorist, less so. You are still dependent on
1/ The insurance company pursuing the matter.
or
2/ Pursuing the matter privately.
Because you have the camera, does not mean that 1/ will automatically happen.
Sorry but I maintain its overkill and paranoia.
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Some service buses have six or seven cameras.
They point forwards, backwards, at the driver and at the passengers.
I was told by an operator the passenger-facing cameras are to prevent false personal injury claims which happen if the bus involved in even a very minor bump.
The OP's camera looks cheap to me at £199, given all the info it records.
The most likely shunt is a rear-ender, so another camera pointing backwards could be useful.
Then there's car jacking and theft from vehicle, so a couple of internal cameras would be handy, too.
Mmm..this is getting very complicated - and expensive.
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I can see this being a feature in future car design beginning with the likes of the posh manufacturers.
There's already in built satnavs, heads up displays, fancy braking systems, night vision cameras, rear parking sensors, side cameras, hands free bluetooth kits etc, etc so an in-built camera/data recording system could be the next progression. Whereas some of these things were once seen as pointless expensive options, they could become the norm just like plugging in an i-pod.
Perhaps insurance companies could offer a discount if one such device is fitted that meets their approval just like they do with Thatcham alarms and tracker devices.
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I was thinking the same. The new BMW 7 Series has side cameras and a night vision camera tucked away neatly in the front grille. If BMW ever wanted to add recording and GPS capability, that would be relatively easy to add since the equipment is already there, essentially.
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I just don't understand why you would want any more surveillance in your life than exists already. There are enough cameras watching me down every high street without sticking more in my car.
I'm with AE on this this - pure paranoia.
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at least with an in-car camera you control what gets filmed. Its hardly an intrusion.
Perhaps its you being paranoid about big brother watching you all the time.
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Two weeks ago I'd have agreed with the paranoia thoughts. But having had a minor ding on a dark night in Scotland where I was stationary and a lorry continued to come at me through a gap which wasn't wide enough makes me think that these have a place, when they are cheap enough.
As it is, I am going to be quite some ££s out of pocket, as insurance would pay out knock for knock and I've already had one write off this year, so I don't want to go that way.
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handy in winter when the windscreen is frosted up, just scrape the bit of screen where the camera points thru and hey presto.. drive - by- monitor
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Just make sure you don't go anywhere that your missus / employer / bit on the side shouldn't know about!!!
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"at least with an in-car camera you control what gets filmed. Its hardly an intrusion."
The though of a nation where everyone is filming everyone else all of the time is not something to look forward to. Effectively there would be filmed records of the movements every driver in the country. I think that is a huge intrusion.
It also need to be considered that such evidence as you may have collected might just as well be used against you as in your favour.
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It's OK, but I would want a big button to press if it's my fault that will do a 7-way way random wipe of the data store.
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hey hamsafar, the camera is hidden & i won't declare i have one untill i have seen the footage myself. You can delete any files you like. Its just an excellent backup for for a witness statement. It will do me anyway, i feel more relaxed, not going to get hammered for a 50/50 when its not my fault again!
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Thanks injection doc it looks a superb system and the gps is a superb added bonus,
Is that all it is £199.99 or do you need to pay for the gps links? after so long
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BB that's the all-in price.
To view video/GPS data you need to plug the memory card into any PC.
Apparently the software is automatically put into the memory card when you plug it into the device so you could put it into any PC, anywhere and view the video/data.
Seems a good idea, especially if you own a very expensive car.
And don't trust your dealer service department...
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'Good Morning Sir, Do you know what speed you were doing?'
"No Officer, I don't believe I was speeding, say about 68-70"
'Do you mind if my colleague looks over your lovely vehicle while you sit in mine, is that a evidence camera, do you object to my colleague looking at looking at the footage?'
'Whilst I see you were travelling at 70.9 MPH when you braked after noticing my vehicle sat on the roadside I can see from the footage that you were travelling at 86MPH immediately before. Do you have your Driving licence on your person sir? You do not have to say anything.....'
That would be my paranoia! Live by big brother, get caught with your pants down by big brother, straight to room 101.
If the police can ask to see your mobile phone to see if it was in use I expect if these cameras are admissible as evidence they will be clever enough to see if they are fitted and require to see if your version bears out what they saw.
My paranoia as I say, good luck with your camera, I hope you don't need it in future.
Edited by FullaFlava on 01/12/2009 at 08:07
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Would certainly be useful if you got involved in one of those scams highlighted recently where you rear end someone involved in an insurance scam. In some cases the car behind is also in on this and swear you were driving too fast etc when in reality the guy in front actually reversed into you. There are situations where a camera would be useful and I would consider one in the future.
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My FIL was driving down a one way street. The car in front stopped suddenly with no indication and then promptly started reversing into a parking space.
In doing so the female driver reversed into his car (luckily a company one) but there was still a lot of aggro over the claim becasue she claimed he ran into the back of her.
A device would have saved so much time, effort and paperwork
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Looks really good to me. I had experimented with mounting a camcorder on my dash, primarily so that I could review any situations that I had experienced (bear in mind that I have only just started driving), but this would be far more convenient.
Injection doc - you mentioned having to hide the cabling. I looked at it on the website and I was under the impression that there was just the power cable with everything else built into the unit that you stick on the windscreen, but I guess there is more to it. Could you possibly clarify what cabling there is please?
Apart from my own desire to review my driving from a learning point of view, I can see the benefit from an insurance point of view but, god forbid the worst ever happended, and you were in an accident were somebody was injured or killed through no fault of your own, the benefit from this kind of proof is a bit more than losing your no claims bonus.
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hi Steel spark
Its just one cable that I squeezed under the trim around the screen so its all hidden. The cable unplugs from the camera if you want to remove camera. the rubber sucker screen mount is large but the sticky one is very small & makes a neat job of it all.
I have had few negative comments but as you say there are some times when its very useful. I hope I never have to use it, but having collided once with a pedestrian ( who's aim was to commit suicide)literally, without a sound witness I could of been prosecuted. It was a horrendous experience & a camera would of been a stress saver years ago .
i have to say I am really pleased with it, software takes a little working out to get started.
The camera even has yaw & axis rate sensors built in and will detect on a graph & even a rear impact etc etc
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For the technology in that device £199 is really cheap, I can see these becoming really popular, perhaps even being built into cars soon.
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Its just one cable that I squeezed under the trim around the screen so its all hidden.
Thanks, so I guess that is the power cable that plugs into the cigarette lighter?
I hope I never have to use it, but having collided once with a pedestrian (who's aim was to commit suicide)literally, without a sound witness I could of been prosecuted. It was a horrendous experience & a camera would of been a stress saver years ago .
Well, even though I have only been driving for a couple of months, I have already had an experience with a guy who walked out from in front of a bus and then started walking directly towards the middle of my hood, apparently trying to walk into it. From his demeanour he did not seem of sound mind, but luckily I was going slow, and he did eventually veer away. Just a bit disturbed I think, but if he had suddenly jumped in front, I wouldn't have minded a video to back up my version of events.
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Thanks, so I guess that is the power cable that plugs into the cigarette lighter?
Yes, but I have hard wired it in for convenience.
Your pedestrian was lucky, mine never got up again! not a pleasant experience.
Also useful in the event of a motorcycle coming straight at you in the wet on a bend
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Dave i agree. i have nothing to hide about speeding or driving but obviously fullaflava does.
Wait till he gets caught with his pants down when he's involved in a prang & no witnesses!
Who will be smiling then?
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