Back
This content is out of date and scheduled to be removed.

The top five highs and lows of owning a dashcam

Image of Neil Thomason
Author: | Updated: 12 Oct 2016 15:25

Sometimes we forget that driving is one of the most dangerous things we do on a day-to-day basis. Well, unless your job is logging or deep sea fishing or removing land mines in which case feel free to aim a ‘pffff’ at that sentence.

But my point stands – you’re driving a tonne of metal at a high speed, surrounded by lots of others doing likewise, so it helps to get a little perspective.

With the number of cars on the roads ever increasing and the road infrastructure unable to keep up, the risk of exposure to dangerous driving and accidents on the road has never been higher. Which is why you may have turned to using a dashcam.

dash cam rear view

Whether you have embraced the dashcam revolution in order to protect against the threat of crash for cash fraudulent claims, or you view the act of recording others on the road as an example of society slipping into some sort of oppressive Orwellian culture, you can’t deny that the amount of dashcam footage released via news outlets and YouTube has given us a variety of perspectives of what motoring around the world looks like.

Below, you’ll see the highs and lows of on-the-road footage caught by dashcam. And yes, there’s plenty of examples from Russia:

The highs of owning a dashcam

Not all footage caught on film via dashcam has been crazy near-misses and blood-boiling examples of awful and inconsiderate driving. Here are a few highlights:

The Russian meteor shower in 2013 wowed the world, and we wouldn’t have had so much amazing footage if it wasn’t due to the amount of Russian’s that use dashcams in their cars.

Why do so many Russian’s have dashcams? Safety fears, poor policing of the roads and corruption are cited as the main reasons.

It’s not every day you see a Stormtrooper on the road, so we’re glad this appearance was caught on dashcam. We can only assume he got lost pursuing Luke and Leia through the forests of Endor…

We feel you silver-car-driver, we hate congestion and gridlock too – especially on the way to the Trafford Centre. But there’s a reason you can’t skip the queue no matter how much you want to get to the Debenhams sale…

We can only assume what must have been going through this poor driver’s mind when the ambush started. Luckily it was just for a paintball game…

We don’t know the make and model of what this guy is driving, looks like the MK2 Ikea Trolley, but we’re pretty sure you can’t lease it and we’re pretty sure it shouldn’t be on the motorway.

The lows of owning a dashcam

There have been some mind-boggling and erratic scenes caught on the road via dashcam. Here are a few respectful lowlights:

There’s inconsiderate motorway driving and then there’s this that leads into something bad for everyone. We can only assume the driver of the BMW had been watching Speed and thought he couldn’t go below 50mph.

Driver distraction and connected cars are of increasing concern to many road safety charities, with the penalty for using your mobile phone to check emails, texts and phone calls now a big no-no. Using your laptop though?

Sometimes owning a dashcam can backfire on the driver. Take for example this recent footage from China – the driver refused to stop for a police officer, scooping him onto his bonnet in the process and taking him for an impromptu ride. Needless to say when the one-mile journey was over the driver was found to be drunk and was arrested.

This footage, caught on dashcam in Belarus, left us all wondering if it was real or some CGI stunt as it shows a highway crash quickly escalate and a motorcyclist use up all of his luck in one move.

Ask anyone what their biggest pet peeve on the road is, and many will say lane discipline on motorways. If middle-lane-hogging was an Olympic event this truck driver would be the Usain Bolt of the sport. I can only wonder at what expletives were filling the air in the car behind.

Categories:
Previous Post Next Post
Not sure what car you want?
  • Easy-to-use tool
  • Save time and money
  • Meet your match
Find your dream car