Car hit me from behind. He said it was my fault

Grumpy_chap

BOWFER said:

zagubov said:

 so perhaps dashcams need to be more of a standard.

I agree, but in my experience they're a pain in the backside.
I'm not willing to rip my car apart for wiring, so I have wires hanging down.
Then constant SD card errors, SD cards are so 1990s and I can't believe they still need them.
Manufacturers need to start offering dashcams as part of the car equipment so they're discreet, like built into the rear view mirror and make them cloud compatible so the footage isn't stored on old tech SD cards.
It's baffling that they've not caught onto this revenue stream yet.

I totally agree that dashcams need to become standard - especially as so many cars already have a front-facing camera for lane keeping assist, traffic sign recognition, autonomous emergency braking etc.  All they need extra is an SSD and download service.  I am not sure cloud-based storage would be viable as it would need constant data link (mobile phone?), consume massive amounts of data and the vast majority of data would not need to be transferred in any case - it is only the exceptions that need to be available.  We agree on the principle - how data is stored is for the designers to sort out.

I think there is a Citroen C3 that has, or had, this feature.  Unfortunately the maximum record time was 3 seconds (or something similarly brief) which would be insufficient if wishing to demonstrate pattern up to an event, not just the event itself.

Why are dashcams not already standard? 
Part of me thinks that the car industry is in cahoots with the aftermarket products people, so they always need to leave something that we'll go out and spend another £100 on at Halfords?
Maybe the car manufacturers are monitoring demand for the aftermarket devices to see that it is not just a fad?
Maybe the car companies don't want variances between different cars for different markets?  I understand there are some locations where the use of dashcams is not permitted.

AdrianC

Grumpy_chap said:

Why are dashcams not already standard? 
Part of me thinks that the car industry is in cahoots with the aftermarket products people, so they always need to leave something that we'll go out and spend another £100 on at Halfords?
Maybe the car manufacturers are monitoring demand for the aftermarket devices to see that it is not just a fad?
Maybe the car companies don't want variances between different cars for different markets?  I understand there are some locations where the use of dashcams is not permitted.

Maybe they know the vast majority of customers won't pay extra for them, and they won't add sales?

Maybe they know that it's pointless fitting something like that, where the tech is rapidly improving, so they'll be out of date in very short order?

As you say, Citroen put an optional factory-fit dashcam in the C3 in 2016, also available in the C5 Aircross. Who uses a five-year-old dashcam now?
https://uk-media.citroen.com/en-gb/connectedcam-citroën®-named-‘safety-technology-year’-firstcar-awards-2019

And I wonder how many customers specified it...

Mickey666

BOWFER said:

zagubov said:

 so perhaps dashcams need to be more of a standard.

I agree, but in my experience they're a pain in the backside.
I'm not willing to rip my car apart for wiring, so I have wires hanging down.
Then constant SD card errors, SD cards are so 1990s and I can't believe they still need them.
Manufacturers need to start offering dashcams as part of the car equipment so they're discreet, like built into the rear view mirror and make them cloud compatible so the footage isn't stored on old tech SD cards.
It's baffling that they've not caught onto this revenue stream yet.

Too many privacy concerns to make dashcams standard equipment.  Cars are fairly low-tech when it comes to IT integration, possibly because there's usually some sort of outcry whenever these sorts of things are suggested.  There are loads of things that could be added to cars eg, black boxes to record all driver behaviour, dashcams, speed limiters linked to GPS mapping systems to prevent speeding, etc, but they are resisted because of 'big brother' or claims that they pave the way for road pricing.

Anyway, I thought no one was going to own a car in the future and we'd all just summon up an autonomous 'pod' (electric of course) via our smartphones whenever we wanted to go somewhere.  As soon as AI becomes safer than the average human driver, people will be banned from driving by the 'elf 'n' safety police because they will cause too many accidents  

AdrianC

Mickey666 said:

Too many privacy concerns to make dashcams standard equipment.  Cars are fairly low-tech when it comes to IT integration, possibly because there's usually some sort of outcry whenever these sorts of things are suggested.  There are loads of things that could be added to cars eg, black boxes to record all driver behaviour, dashcams, speed limiters linked to GPS mapping systems to prevent speeding, etc, but they are resisted because of 'big brother' or claims that they pave the way for road pricing.

Au contraire - black box data loggers and "intelligent speed assistance" will be a legal requirement on all new cars from next year.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_19_1793
(And, yes, it'll apply to Brexit Britain, too, because UNECE.)

As soon as AI becomes safer than the average human driver, people will be banned from driving by the 'elf 'n' safety police because they will cause too many accidents

We are a WORLD away from that currently. Self-driving cars are several orders of magnitude less safe and competent than humans.

BOWFER

Mickey666 said:

Anyway, I thought no one was going to own a car in the future and we'd all just summon up an autonomous 'pod' (electric of course) via our smartphones whenever we wanted to go somewhere.  As soon as AI becomes safer than the average human driver, people will be banned from driving by the 'elf 'n' safety police because they will cause too many accidents  

God, I can't wait.

neilmcl

BOWFER said:

zagubov said:

 so perhaps dashcams need to be more of a standard.

I agree, but in my experience they're a pain in the backside.
I'm not willing to rip my car apart for wiring, so I have wires hanging down.
Then constant SD card errors, SD cards are so 1990s and I can't believe they still need them.
Manufacturers need to start offering dashcams as part of the car equipment so they're discreet, like built into the rear view mirror and make them cloud compatible so the footage isn't stored on old tech SD cards.
It's baffling that they've not caught onto this revenue stream yet.

You're asking for stuff that really isn't needed. Yes, you can argue that micro SD card storage is old, but it's very cheap, most people use them in their phones, and it does the job very well. Cloud storage for something like a dashcam which by it's nature is always on the move isn't going to be cheap nor that reliable.

Also, I'd question why you think a dashcam can't be installed discreetly. It took me less than half an hour to install mine a few years back and I don't have any wires hanging down and you wouldn't notice it was there unless you looked for it.

AdrianC

neilmcl said:

BOWFER said:

Then constant SD card errors, SD cards are so 1990s and I can't believe they still need them.
Manufacturers need to start offering dashcams as part of the car equipment so they're discreet, like built into the rear view mirror and make them cloud compatible so the footage isn't stored on old tech SD cards.

You're asking for stuff that really isn't needed. Yes, you can argue that micro SD card storage is old, but it's very cheap, most people use them in their phones, and it does the job very well. Cloud storage for something like a dashcam which by it's nature is always on the move isn't going to be cheap nor that reliable.

And when you're driving somewhere with zero mobile coverage...?

What sort of bandwidth is needed to livestream HD video? And what sort of data volumes are required to do that constantly...?

BOWFER

neilmcl said:

Yes, you can argue that micro SD card storage is old, but it's very cheap, most people use them in their phones, and it does the job very well. Cloud storage for something like a dashcam which by it's nature is always on the move isn't going to be cheap nor that reliable.

Also, I'd question why you think a dashcam can't be installed discreetly. It took me less than half an hour to install mine a few years back and I don't have any wires hanging down and you wouldn't notice it was there unless you looked for it.

I literally don't know anyone who uses a mobile phone with an SD card.
I also didn't say they "can't" be installed discreetly, I said it's a pain.
I'm not taking trim panels off my car, or trying to find a live feed.
The pitfalls of having a camera outweigh the benefits for me, by a big margin.

BOWFER

AdrianC said:

neilmcl said:

BOWFER said:

Then constant SD card errors, SD cards are so 1990s and I can't believe they still need them.
Manufacturers need to start offering dashcams as part of the car equipment so they're discreet, like built into the rear view mirror and make them cloud compatible so the footage isn't stored on old tech SD cards.

You're asking for stuff that really isn't needed. Yes, you can argue that micro SD card storage is old, but it's very cheap, most people use them in their phones, and it does the job very well. Cloud storage for something like a dashcam which by it's nature is always on the move isn't going to be cheap nor that reliable.

And when you're driving somewhere with zero mobile coverage...?

What sort of bandwidth is needed to livestream HD video? And what sort of data volumes are required to do that constantly...?

I was looking at it from the point of view that the footage could be uploaded when you're in a wifi zone.
Maybe this is impractical, no idea, but the SD card thing hacks me right off when 2 x Nextbase cameras I bought both rejected the SD cards that had worked for months.
Both cameras shoved into a cupboard, old tech user unfriendly rubbish.

BOWFER

AdrianC said:

We are a WORLD away from that currently. Self-driving cars are several orders of magnitude less safe and competent than humans.

We're really not.
Las Vegas has had driverless cars and buses for a while now, millions of miles done.
The cars still need a driver in them to supervise, but the confidence levels are now at the stage that permission has been approved to go fully driverless.
The buses have been completely driverless for a while.