Dash Cam - Which one?

[mybrainhurts]

911cab said:

How about this Blackvue DR380G-HD I've got 2 of them, worth their weight in gold.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/261187570101?ssPageName=...

STARTING bid £160..? Bit pointless when there are very good units around £50. This bloke's reviews are useful...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4rwMV7hhaY

[NiceCupOfTea]

GC8 said:

By using a higher capacity TF card, you can prevent overwriting from becoming an issue.

Mine is small at 1GiB so itll only record a rlling 30 minutes or so, which suits me. If I wanted to be sure that a days journey wasnt going to be overwritten then Id be looking at a substantially larger card.

If you have a 16GiB Transflash card then itll be eight hours untill what youve just seen will be erased.

Less on these cameras because of course it is recording 2 videos, still into hours though.

MBH, the save function is only really intended for saving near misses, or that sort of thing. If 65ou want to save a route, just swap out the microsd card and copy off the files

[911cab]

Have a look at this on the Mi witness site


http://news.mi-witness.co.uk/suction-mounted-car-c...

Be warned, if you use a suction mounted car camera in the UK, if the device (camera and / or cradle and / or suction cup) intrudes more than 4cm into the secondary (pink) wiper clearance zone, or intrudes more than 1cm into the primary (red) wiper clearance zone of the windscreen, you are committing a serious traffic offense (dangerous driving) under the UK Road Traffic Act 1988, and your vehicle is not roadworthy (it would fail an MOT).

Also / in addition, if you use a car camera with an LCD screen, if the screen is on for any of the time while you are driving and you, the driver, can view that screen, you are also committing a serious traffic offense.

[GC8]

*rubs chin*

I wouldnt worry too much about the screen: it isnt a television and its no different to the LCDs fitted to many cars now.

[GC8]

This is some other misinformed nonsense off the site:

"‘Suction’ Mounted Car Cameras, are basically illegal in the UK, using them is a motoring offence of dangerous driving, and selling them for use in the UK is a crime"

A crime indeed.

[smiffy180]

Any of here worth a punt?
http://www.chinavasion.com/china/wholesale/Car_Vid...

[mybrainhurts]

911cab said:

Be warned, if you use a suction mounted car camera in the UK, if the device (camera and / or cradle and / or suction cup) intrudes more than 4cm into the secondary (pink) wiper clearance zone, or intrudes more than 1cm into the primary (red) wiper clearance zone of the windscreen, you are committing a serious traffic offense (dangerous driving) under the UK Road Traffic Act 1988, and your vehicle is not roadworthy (it would fail an MOT).

That has a hint of bks on board...

[GC8]

Dig deeper and the hint becomes a proper smell.

I havent quoted it but the rest of the site is similar, talking about two-way insurance and other nonsense about claims which suggests that much of it is lifted from an American site.

[saaby93]

Anyone have experience of buying one of those £46 with built in GPS?
Is GPS worth having?

[FiF]

As posted the other day, police patrol spotted with what looked like a Roadhawk directly in that pink zone plus the RTI screen in the Volvo also infringed when raised.

Advice on that site is largely alarmist tosh for UK.

Having said that we've all seen cars with satnav mounts in clearly brain dead positions.

[mybrainhurts]

FiF said:

As posted the other day, police patrol spotted with what looked like a Roadhawk directly in that pink zone plus the RTI screen in the Volvo also infringed when raised.

Advice on that site is largely alarmist tosh for UK.

Having said that we've all seen cars with satnav mounts in clearly brain dead positions.

...many plod in my neck of the woods attach their own Tomtoms to the centre of the screen.

Disregard that "pink zone" stuff, the diagram is left hand drive. Clearly not UK relevant.

I wouldn't buy anything from anybody who tried to pull a scare stunt like that.

[smiffy180]

http://www.chinavasion.com/china/wholesale/Car_Vid...
What do we think to this? Seems smart

[mybrainhurts]

swerni said:

Interesting threading
A cyclist has a cam and he's a yohgart weaving, beaded, lefty trouble maker.
However, if a motorist gets one..........

Just saying

Just saying what?

The bicyclists who've fallen foul of criticism are those who clearly set out to wind drivers up and goad them into doing something stupid, then putting it up on Youtube and/or reporting them.

How many drivers here do you reckon would pull stupid stunts like that?

I came across a smartarse bicyclist sporting a camera a couple of weeks ago. The lorry pulling out of the farmyard stopped to wave me on and blocked his side of the road, but loopy man-in-tights coming the other way never had a thought I might be approaching and set about passing the nose of the lorry. When he saw me, he had a choice of riding into me or falling off. He chose the latter and ended up sprawling in the muck with his bike on top of him.

I bet that footage never sees the light of day...

PS...oh, how we laughed.

[FiF]

Well it's true that some of the bullet cam proponents on both sides, cyclists and drivers, seem to fall into the definition of somone who sees a situation developing, decide to avoid it, in some cases possibly aggravate it or at minimum give things a little nudge, all so they can have an opportunity to post a "Look at this knob" YouTube video. Each to their own.

However, have you ever considered why there was so much footage of the Russian meteorite from various angles all from dash cam footage?
Read this and this

Now Russia is Russia, and I would never for one nanosecond suggest that the problem of the corrupt law enforcement officer is one that we have in UK, but the issue of declining driving standards and insurance scammers is an issue, albeit not yet at the Russian scale. Whilst we have considerable numbers of motorists on our roads that believe what goes for custom and practice in downtown Ankara is also good for Birmingham city centre then I can see why people would use dash cams.

[smiffy180]

Aside from price I'm highly impressed by this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkewh5kV588&fe...

It supports up to 128gb! 20 hours recording. Has a seperate save for any crashes and emergency recording. If anyone on here buys one make sure you upload a vid.
Does the google maps thingy and g force meter too. Some serious kit here
This is at the top of my list at the moment

More info here:
http://lukashd.com/eng/product_info/blackbox_14_1....

[mybrainhurts]

What's different about that, apart from the 120 hours?

[smiffy180]

mybrainhurts said:

What's different about that, apart from the 120 hours?

Conpared to......?
Look at the website it tells you what it does, alot of dashcams don't do half that although they'll be half the price

[mybrainhurts]

The only thing I can see that's unique is a lens thread for optical filters. All the other features are present on cheap units. Can't see why you would need a lens filter for this application.

[All that jazz]

smiffy180 said:

http://www.chinavasion.com/china/wholesale/Car_Vid...
What do we think to this? Seems smart

Having dealt with Chinavasion in the past and lost a not inconsiderable amount of money due to their sneaky small print I wouldn't touch anything from them with a very long stick.

[GC8]

Can you elaborate, please?