Apart from recording traffic accidents, dashcams have the side effect of preventing aggressive behaviour in the car, according to figures from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Nextbase, the market leader in portable devices expects 110,000 dashcams to be sold in the Netherlands during 2019, with Belgium not far behind. In the United Kingdom, a million dashcams are already being sold yearly. Insurance agencies even offer premium discounts when a dashcam is used, according to NewMobility.
In the UK, the company Brooker developed a website where users can upload their recordings and images directly to the police. “This results in 270 videos a week, which sometimes show life-threatening situations," the company added.
The website is designed in such a way that users cannot post the images anonymously, seeing as they have to be willing to testify in court. In the Netherlands too, the police are more likely to get videos of aggressive or rude behaviour. “If these are accompanied by testimonies, they are excellent additional evidence," the Dutch police said, which has a deterring effect on road hogs and aggressive drivers.
A dash cam is a small camera mounted behind the windscreen or on the dashboard, filming the road. As soon as the car moves, the camera starts recording. When the memory is full, the first images will be overwritten automatically. Some newer models can 'understand' when they are in an accident, after which they automatically send the recordings to the cloud. This year's new models can even call the 112 emergency number if the driver does not respond anymore after the crash.
Maïthé Chini
The Brussels Times
