thejollyvic wrote:Heineken wrote:So I'm one of these people who can sit down and watch those Russian car crash videos for hours, upon hours on end. Have been a subscriber to Dash Cam Owners Australia on YT & FB for a while now and have been watching the Australian Dash Camp compilations they come out with.
Anyway, been thinking about picking up a dash cam or two for myself, Mrs Heineken and some other family members after a few close shaves on the roads recently. Sydney drivers are notoriously fucking shit anyway, and I think it's good to have a camera.
So my query is, do any forumites use dash cams in their vehicles. Could you recommend any?
just look for ones made by the same companies that make GPS tomtom navaman etc. Also dont waste money on a big SD card no need. if nothing happens just delete the footage to free up space. The amount of people who come in to my work and buy a 32gb SD card because there 8gb has no space left is ridicolous
All depends on the cam quality and what they're trying to achieve though.
The 64GB card I have lasts me maybe a day or two as I have two HD cams recording to the one source, even when the car is turned off (and I like having the absolute maximum retention).
Heiny, best place to look for stuff is
https://dashcamsaustralia.com.au/I personally have a BlackVue DR550GW-2CH (
here) which I got specifically because it does front and back (in 1080p/720p respectively), has built in GPS location and speed logging, audio recording (will easily catch conversations outside the car even with it running and the windows up) as well as Wi-Fi connectivity so I can pull footage/images straight off it via their Android app on my phone (which gets updated quite often).
Not only that, that particular cam has a shit load of features you can tweak for things like sensitivities, motion detection and so forth. I also have it combined with a
Power Magic Pro box (which is made by the same company as the BV cams) so that the cam runs off the car battery even when the car is off, which is no biggy as it is just a 12v cam and won't ever drain the battery as the box will turn off the cam when the battery charge level starts getting low.
That's quite up the scale a bit (I paid nearly $500 for mine 2 years ago, I see they've dropped price now) however I bought my brother one of
these for Christmas last year and it has served him really well for his needs (basically catching twats in Townsville doing stupid shit).
One thing I will say though, once you put one in your car, all the fuckwits around you will really start coming out of the wood works for some reason, it's like Murphy's Law or something. What I will say though, you will catch a lot of comedic value and toolbags on that cam, but it will also save your arse and pay for itself the first time you have to make a major claim.
Case and point not even 3 months ago I had a rio bar wire strap fall off the back of a truck holding other construction stuff (that wasn't tied down correctly) on the Motorway here in Townsville. Bounced off the road @ 100kph and hit my car leaving a nice big guage in my paint and a fucked driver mirror, had just missed the windscreen funnily enough which would have smashed the whole lot in or even hit me.
Either way, my excess was $600 so it paid for itself then and there as I sent off the footage to the insurance company and they followed it up and I got the repairs done for free.
Can't understate how important these things are nowdays, we aren't Russia, but we do have our fair share of fuckwits.
-PB