LANE- DEPARTURE WARNING?

Since the pick-up wasn’t slated for any long hauls, I mounted the Thinkware F750 dash cam to the windscreen of my sedan before setting off on a 400-kilometre odyssey. I had to retrieve a golf cart I’d bought online, naturally.

Unlike typical dash cams that just record video to document a collision for insurance purposes, the F750’s camera reads the lines on the road and chirps urgently if you veer, just like a factory lane-departure warning system. But here’s the problem: the F750 doesn’t know whether your turn signals are on, so every time you intentionally change lanes, the small box on the windscreen harangues you. On the highway, I had to deactivate lane-departure mode to save my sanity.

As for the camera, an impact will cause it to automatically save (a feature triggered by entry into a steep parking lot), or you can also hit a button to save video. I hydroplaned across a flooded road at 100 km/h and somehow made it out unscathed. But I was so rattled that I didn’t think about the camera until it had already recorded over the footage like an unloved episode of ALF. My advice: Use a bigger SD card, or “Man drives into lake at 100 km/h” will never go viral.