DIY dashboard camera

These days i’m driving just as much as i ever did whilst i was in college (about 40 miles away). The chances are i’ll end up working somewhere that far away if not further so i think it makes sense to get in to the habit of recording what’s in front of me. I’ve stumbled upon several accidents over the years although never witnessed any unfold before my eyes… i have witnessed plenty of stupid stuff though and i’m confident i’ll witness more….

Ebay camera mount

I bought this suction cup mount on ebay for less than €4, for my regular camera…

My regular camera shoots pretty good HD video plus it’s got decent battery life and i’ve a spare battery for it so on long journeys, it will do the job perfectly. It’s more of a one off thing though. If i’m in a rush, i’m not going to go to the trouble of sticking this up somewhere, screwing on the camera and making sure it’s all set up properly & stable. Ideally, i’d want to turn on the ignition and have some hidden device record automatically, whilst the engine is running. That type of device though doesn’t come cheap so for now it remains on a wishlist.

The only ‘problem’ with this particular mount is that it can’t obviously stick to a dashboard, so you need to stick something to the dashboard in order for the suction cup to function properly. Today i stuck it on a window but it wouldn’t swivel around properly so the footage wasn’t great and i decided not to upload it. But i’m often driving to dundalk / drogheda / dublin these days so you can expect to see plenty of driving videos from me…

This is one reason why dash cams are the future

Whether it’s insurance fraud or murder, plenty of people get away with things due to lack of evidence or he said / she said debates. The camera never lies and for that reason i’m convinced all cars of the future will come with their own ‘black box’ device which will include at least one camera of some sort. It just makes sense. If you have an accident right now, you can play innocent if there were no witnesses.

Let’s say i fall asleep at the wheel and roll down a ditch.. i could say i swerved when i seen a rabbit or something and lost control. A black box device connected to sensors could capture the following info upon impact; my speed, road position, videos of the road in front of me and possible me (the driver). Gardai come along, retrieve the black box and we all find out what really happened. Honesty wins.

This is a shocking video of a woman who was late for work, recklessly overtaking & speeding in a residential area. At a pedestrian crossing, she overtakes a car and ploughs past an old guy crossing the road, knocking him to the ground like a bowling ball. She didn’t even brake and notice the car she overtook continues driving too – complete idiots, the two of them. It was all captured on camera and the car with the camera chased after the woman, who denied anything happened and tried to escape….