Our nation’s roads are filled with hazards. Inattentive drivers, distractions from mobile devices, road construction, and aggressive driving can make travel on our highways and byways perilous. Many drivers are investing in dashboard cameras, commonly referred to as “dash cams”.
Type the phrase “dash cam” into the search box on YouTube, and you will be greeted by thousands of video clips captured by these small recording devices. Dash cams provide several benefits to motorists, which we will discuss in the article below.
What Are Dash Cams?
Dashboard cams, or dash cams, are small electronic recording devices that capture the activities in front of the car. These cameras are generally small, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and are usually affixed to the inside of the car’s windshield with a suction cup. Some dash cams record continuously for hours, while others only record 15-30 minutes, then erase footage and overwrite it unless the driver presses a memory button. This feature can eliminate hours of footage where nothing happens, while preserving evidence in the event of a crash. Dash cams range in price from less than $50 to $200-300, depending on features.
Some concerned drivers opt to install a second dash cam on the back window of the vehicle, giving them the ability to record events that occur behind the car.
What Benefits do Dash Cams Provide?
It is a fact that in the event of a crash or motor vehicle collision, eyewitness accounts of what actually happened can be foggy at best, or downright incorrect at worst. Ask any two witnesses what they observed, and one is likely to find two very different accounts. Police are dependent on these accounts to write their incident reports, and without adequate witness recollection, a motorist that is the victim of a crash can now be a suspect. With a dash cam, there is no longer a need for eyewitnesses; the evidence of the incident is preserved aboard the cam’s memory chip. Dash cams help protect motorist rights in cases where property damage or injury occur on the road.
While no insurance companies currently offer discounts for dash cams in the U.S., this is likely to change in the coming years. Ultimately, dash cams can save insurance companies money by eliminating misdirected compensation for incidents that their clients did not cause. Think of this as a potential long-term benefit of using a dash cam during daily driving events.
The final benefit comes when dash cams record adventures. Not every driving event results in a crash, thankfully, but the dash cam records everything that takes place. Family trips, unusual wildlife sightings, interesting roadside attractions – all of these are part of the experience dash cam users have when reviewing the footage of their road travels.
Final Words on Dash cams
Dashboard cameras protect motorist rights as they record the events of road travel. Motorists that use dash cams have extra insurance in the form of real evidence in the unlikely event that a crash occurs. This provides incredible peace of mind. If you spend a lot of time on our nation’s roadways, think about investing in a dash cam – for your safety and for the safety of others on the roads we share.
