Gadgetory

it's a wild world out there having a recording of it can be handy to show who's really at fault in a crash provide evidence of a crime that you weren't involved in that saw or kitc that jackass and hit your car in the parking lot it just drove off dash cams have a host of unique features for capturing all that easily and better than just a standard digital camera or clipping your smartphone up here they are constant recording that means they're always running and merely overriding the oldest clip once they fill up the card but you can put a huge card in there dual lenses are common not always but common they all have at least one lens that looks out through the windshield but some cameras also have one that looks back in the cabinet you think of like the cameras you see in taxicabs commonly others have a remote second camera that can be put in the back to look at the person who's about to rear-end you GPS data is typically recorded by these cameras to both know where the car was when an impact happened let's say but also to monitor its speed would be handy when you have one of these mounted up for your kids they typically have impact sensors that's used to save a clip and lock it so it doesn't get deleted if it was recorded during an impact because it assumes you want that one if you park in a sketchy place where your car is getting banged into all the time and it's making you nuts look for a camera that has motion detection it'll basically sleep until it sees something moving and then roll video on the shenanigans and they didn't be pretty affordable let's face it most of us don't want to dedicate something to just this one purpose that cost a ton of money so these are definitely available in the hundred to one hundred fifty dollar range they can go higher but not all that is buying a dashcam isn't the entire answer he needs to know how to use it so here are some tips first of all know where you can mount it wouldn't it be ironic to try and be Johnny law abiders I having one of these and then break the law by putting it basically where I have it most states require you stick it over in one of the Farlow corners of your windshield not here in the middle where everyone tends to put it be ready for a lousy frustrating interface when I got our cameras in for testing I finally found out where all those people who used to engineer television interfaces and the 90s went to get a job power cords battery dashcam out there requires a constant source of power from a nearby 12-volt outlet which isn't that nearby because it's in the windshield so you have to deal with dressing this putting it away somewhere so it's not hanging here these do not have long life batteries that's not in their design and finally know about eavesdropping laws recording video is one thing recording people's audio is actually a much touchier area 12 US states are what are called two party states you can't record a conversation unless everybody involved has given permission that's something to be aware of most of these cameras have the ability to turn off their microphone for that reason and in many countries like Spain Austria Switzerland even recording video of the public road without people permission is banned now you might ask what kind of insurance discount do I get for doing this well in the u.s. as far as we can tell none there is one insurer in the UK who's offering a supposed 10% discount for having a dashcam but you're kind of ahead of the curve with one of these also note that these are not primary fatality or injury reduction devices there's secondary litigation devices so these don't keep you from getting hurt as a result the insurance companies aren't that enthralled by them yet now it's beyond our scope or expertise to advise you on the law of obtaining this video then the police take it can the other guys attorneys take it is it totally your property that's something to check out in your area before you start to use one of these because once you get into a wreck someone's gonna see you have one and then it's gonna be a ball in play and finally realize it you don't want to go this route you can get some really good dashcam apps for your smartphone it requires tying up your phone for that use of course and you have to follow all those other rules on mentioned but it's an easy or free way to at least try out this behavior