Dashcam

A dashcam (dashboard camera) is an onboard camera fitted at the front window of a car and used to record traffic incidents. Dashcams are widespread in Russia^[1] as a form of sousveillance, additional evidence in court, and as a guard against police corruption and insurance fraud.^[2] They have been called "ubiquitous" and "an on-line obsession", and are so prevalent that dashcam footage was the most common footage of the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor,^[3] which was documented from a dozen angles. Thousands of videos showing automobile crashes, close calls, and attempts at insurance fraud have been uploaded,^{[ 1]} an oft-gruesome genre which has generated its own Russian lexicon^[4] such as:

• слабоумие и отвага (slaboumiye i otvaga) – “Courage and dementia"
• железобетонное очко (zhelezobetonnoye ochko) – “Anus of Reinforced Concrete" (i.e. "one whose anus is made of reinforced concrete", an honorific for an especially skilled driver reacting adequately to an emergency situation).

Dashcams are forbidden by law in Austria.^[5]

Typical features that differentiate dashcams from normal solid state digital video cameras:

• Hardwire-able into a vehicle's 12v electrical system
• Automatic start and stop recording. Recording begins when the vehicle is started, and ends when the vehicle is turned off.
• Automatic looping. When the dashcam's memory card is full, instead of stopping recording, the oldest footage is recorded over.

These features allow for set and forget installations, where the user does not have to interact with the camera unless an incident occurs or recent footage is needed.

References

External links

• Will the dashcam protect the driver?