I wanted to expand on my opinions of dash-cams that I mentioned in Thunder’s post. While I agree that dash-cams are useful, they only get you so far in an insurance or civil law situation. I’ve obviously handled claims in which there was footage and I’ve also been involved in my own accidents in which footage was involved.
I can’t comment about it’s use in criminal law, but I would guess that since criminal law is codified rather than based on a “test of reasonableness”, that dascham footage is more useful. If footage shows a crime being committed or a traffic offence, then it happened. Criminal/traffic law rarely takes context into account until sentencing.
They provide only a snapshot of a situation. They don’t provide much in the way of context. If I receive footage in a claim, it isn’t a be all/end all. What if my driver gave a “you go!” hand signal to the other driver? What if my driver was impaired? What if my driver’s car was not well maintained? All I see is a brief clip of a car accident. It isn’t as helpful as you would think.
As an exercise/example of context, I have included a GIF of some footage from the Kia’s dashcam earlier this week. Without context, can you tell what is occurring?