Dashcams may prevent disputes
Police, insurers, courts look at dash cam videos as impartial witness
CALGARY— In a video taken through the windshield of Dung Le’s 15-year-old Toyota Echo, an oncoming car breaks the monotony of a wide, nearly empty street on a quiet morning in a residential Edmonton neighbourhood.
As it approaches, the car leaves its lane as though turning into a driveway, then straightens and aims head-on at Le’s car.
There’s a crashing noise, the dash cam is jolted upward to focus on empty blue sky and a man’s voice is heard saying, “What happened? What happened?”
Le, who is originally from Vietnam, said his dash cam footage made it easy when downloaded later on to show exactly what had just happened.
“Lucky I had the dash cam camera when that lady went from the other side into my lane and hit my car. My car is a total writeoff,” the 52-year-old man said.
“My shoulder and my neck are in pain, sore.” Dashboard cameras, commonly used in police cars and other emergency vehicles, are increasingly being installed in personal vehicles by motorists who want to bring along an impartial witness when they hit the road.
Insurance companies in Canada don’t offer premium discounts for dashcams yet, said Pete Karageorgos, the Insurance Bureau of Canada’s director of consumer and industry relations for Ontario.
But they might in future if they find the cameras reduce the risk of having to pay out a claim.
“Dashcams may, like GPS devices, be a distraction if they’re not properly used. So there’s that to be aware of and be concerned about,” he pointed out.
“On the other side of the coin, if someone is involved in a crash or they witness something, the good thing about having dash cam video is it really is an impartial and unbiased witness to the events.”
He recalled a case involving a collision on Hwy. 401, near Toronto, where a vehicle stopped and then suddenly backed up and struck a following car.
Typically, the driver of the following car would have been assumed to be at fault in what appeared to be a rear-end collision.
But the dash cam video proved it was, in fact, a case of attempted fraud.
Camera sales and installations at AutoTemp’s south Calgary vehicle accessories shop are equally split these days between business vehicles and personal cars, said manager Tim Bruce.
“For a category that didn’t exist 10 years ago, it’s becoming more and more popular,” he said.
The units sell for between $200 and $500, he said. Installation, which involves running wires to the camera for power and fixing it in place, takes two to four hours.
Generally, the more expensive units have the most options, Bruce said, including a second camera for the back window, higher resolution picture quality, larger storage cards, GPS for estimating speed and Wi-Fi connectivity allowing the video to be downloaded to a cellphone.
The cameras start operating automatically when the car starts and run continuously, but some are also activated when the engine is off if they detect motion or an impact — such as when the car is struck by a vandal or another vehicle, he said.
The memory cards are overwritten as they fill, so the owner has to save a file separately if they want to keep it.
Customers buy cameras for old and new cars alike.
But Bruce said many come in after they’ve been involved in an accident or an insurance dispute where they wish they had had dash cam video.
Le’s dash cam footage will make a huge difference in settling insurance and legal questions related to the case, said Edmonton personal injury lawyer Norm Assiff, who is representing Le.
Without the video, the other driver could claim Le was at fault, he said. An accident reconstruction after the fact might conclude both parties were somehow at fault and split liability.
In either case, his client could be on the hook for damages and face potential insurance rate hikes, Assiff said.
“In an injury case, which is my expertise, there are always two issues,” the lawyer said.
“The first issue is liability: who’s at fault? The second issue is quantum of damages: how much is the case worth, and causation, did the accident cause the injuries?”
From a legal perspective, there’s no privacy issue because the roadway is considered a public place, he said, adding courts typically consider dash cam video to be admissible as evidence.
Protection from dishonesty is the reason Dung Le bought his dash cam online for about $69 about five years ago.
“A dash cam makes a lot more reliable witness,” Le summed up.