This summer a video shot on a road in Sardinia was circulating a lot, showing a bright trail in the sky much larger than normal “shooting stars”. It was probably a small meteorite, which a motorist had managed to film at the exact moment he passed thanks to a dashcam, a dashboard camera. A similar thing happened in 2013 in Russia, where as many as twelve people captured a meteorite crossing the sky at the same time. In Russia, accidents, insurance frauds and abuses of power by the police are very frequent and for this reason already at that time around one million people owned a dashcam. In recent years, dash cams have also spread to other countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, where an estimated three million motorists have one, and France. We have no data on sales in Italy, but judging by the number of reviews on Amazon, recently several people have decided to buy one.
Light trail taken by the dashcam towards Torregrande: show! #meteorite #meteora #Sardinia pic.twitter.com/LPKToQCM2m
– Claudio Porcu (@ClaudioPorcu) August 16, 2019
What are the dashcam
The dashcam are small cameras made specifically to be installed in the car and to record what happens while driving; dash in English means “dashboard”. There are many types: some have only a front camera, others have one also for the rear window of the car, others still allow a 360-degree shooting around the vehicle. There are also internal dash cams, designed to capture the behavior of car passengers and used above all by taxi drivers and drivers of services such as Uber to protect themselves in the event of disputes with customers and discourage robberies and violence.
How they work, in brief
In most cases the dash cams are powered by the energy produced by the moving car (they have a USB power cable which must be inserted into the cigarette lighter socket) and for this reason they turn on and off automatically together with the machine. When the dashcam is turned on it continuously resumes and saves all the footage on a memory card in many video files lasting a few minutes: after some time, when the memory card is full, the old videos are automatically overwritten with new ones registrations. In case of accidents or special events, you must therefore save the videos you want to keep and move them from the memory card to other devices.
In some dash cams the saving of the videos must be done manually, in other cases the dashcam automatically saves the images collected in relation to an anomalous event recorded by the sensors: for example if the car is buffered, the sensors recognize that something significant has happened and save footage immediately before and after that event. When the car is off, the dash cams also turn off, but in some models the sensors continue to work: for example, if another vehicle collides with the car while it is parked, the sensors detect it and activate the cameras for a few minutes.
When they can be useful
The main purpose of dash cams is to document everything that happens on the street in order to have objective and detailed evidence in order to to seek compensation or prove innocence in the event of an accident. In Italy, unless the drivers of the vehicles involved are completely in agreement on the attribution of responsibilities, when a traffic accident occurs it is the duty of each party to prove their innocence and the dashcam footage can be very useful for this. purpose. In fact, often in these situations one can only rely on eyewitnesses, and it is difficult to obtain objective evidence a posteriori. In the event of a legal dispute, however, the judge always has the last word and a video evidence obtained with the dashcam can help, but does not by itself represent any guarantee.
Dash cams can also be useful in other cases: for example if the road is bumpy and the driver decides to ask for compensation, or if the owner of the car wants to document its movements when someone else is driving (new drivers or elderly people for example), obviously with your consent. And then there is always the hope of spotting some exceptional happening and making millions of views on YouTube.
What does the law say?
In many countries, the diffusion of these cameras has raised questions regarding the rules governing the privacy of the people being filmed. In Italy there is no specific legislation for dash cams, but the laws on the processing of personal data apply, which say that those who come into possession of them cannot systematically communicate them to third parties or disseminate them. This means that, if we want to publish a video made with the dashcam on social networks, we must make sure that neither the persons recorded nor any other personal data attributable to them, such as the license plates of the cars, are recognizable. In case of accidents (therefore which do not occur systematically, but only occasionally), however, the video can be shown for personal purposes to people who are part of the insurance chain.
Which one to choose?
According to Wirecutter, the influential New York Times review site, the best dash cams on the market are from Nextbase. The most recommended model is Nextbase 522GW, which costs 215 euros on Amazon. Wirecutter says it produces much sharper images (1440 pixels) than the other dash cams tested and is easy to use because it's touchscreen. Like many other dash cams, the Nextbase has a small holder that attaches to the windshield to which the camera is fixed when using the car: unlike other dash cams, the Nextbase has a magnetic system to put the camera in and out quickly and easily.
In addition to GPS, which also combines vehicle position data with saved videos, it has Bluetooth and wifi to send files directly to the smartphone without having to remove the memory card. If desired, it can also be integrated with Alexa, Amazon's virtual assistant, or activate a system that automatically alerts help in case of emergency. Wirecutter also recommends the cheaper model, Nextbase 422 GW, which has nearly all the features of 522GW, but is more compact, has a smaller screen, and is cheaper (€ 183).
These two models, however, are not among the most purchased on the Italian Amazon site and do not even have an Italian review. If you are looking for a product with reviews in Italian, Wirecutter also speaks well of Vantrue N2 Pro (160 euros), which also appears in the ranking of the Italian review site Quales Scelere.it and on the Italian Amazon site has 67 reviews with an average of 4 , 1 stars out of 5. It is a compact dual camera with two cameras: one facing the road that captures images at 170 degrees (a little less than a flat angle then), one facing the interior of the car with shooting at 140 degrees, which therefore also partially reflects the windows and what happens outside.
For Wirecutter it is the best purchase for those who also want to film the interior of the car, as well as the road. The quality of the videos is very good, even at night and even inside the car when it is dark, and it has the parking mode that is activated when the sensors detect movements. The GPS can be activated but a receiver must be purchased separately and the micro SD memory card must also be purchased separately (the latest version supports SD cards up to 256 GB).
If, on the other hand, you are not interested in filming the interior of the car and you have no particular needs, according to Quales Scelere.it the dashcam with the best quality-price ratio is Aukey DR01 (55 euros), which is also the best-selling model on Amazon and has more of 500 reviews with an average of 4.4 stars out of 5. This dashcam has a single front camera that takes pictures at 170 degrees, has a full HD resolution and returns quite sharp images even in low light conditions (although it should be remembered that when driving in the dark the car's headlights are always on, so visibility is almost always ensured). Here too there is the motion sensor that activates the car even when it is parked. It is compact and very easy to assemble: just attach it with the suction cup or double-sided tape and insert the USB cable into the cigarette lighter socket. It does not connect to wifi so to get the images you have to extract the memory card; a micro SD up to 128 GB is fine, but must be bought separately.
Disclaimer: on some of the sites linked in the Consumerism section, the Post has an affiliation and obtains a small share of the revenues, without changes in prices – which may vary from day to day compared to those indicated, based on the offers.
But you can also google them.
