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[Mister Rog]

Get a dashcam.

You're driving along, early evening, low sun, and rain, heading North so sun is behind. Within the speed limit and no drink or drugs.

A person runs out and hits the offside front quarter of your car. Head through windscreen. An eye witness turned out to be unreliable. Now of course the "experts" will have an opinion but as far as the police are concerned it's hard evidence that matters. A dash cam may or may not have recorded the actual impact, but it will show what did NOT happen IE: a front-on collision, and it will aslo have recorded other circumstances and events.

This is not me, but someone I know who is now a mental wreck due to the uncertainty, and serious injury of another.

[dave the builder]

I've got front and rear cams on most of the cars
I'm seriously considering fitting side cameras
the standard of driving round my way is atrocious 
wrong side of the line,  even on blind bends
failing to match speed to merge,
no indicators
no lane discipline on islands ,
scooters and bikes with no clue of the HWC

how do the idiots get a licence is beyond me 

[YZ250]

I've got front and rear cams on most of the cars ………

Yep, front and rear cams on ours. 

I used to have to do a lot of editing on my dash cams so as not to incriminate myself but since learning my lesson I’m all good now. 

[johnnydog]

When considering any offence of possible due care relative to a road accident with a pedestrian v car,  very basically the Police used to consider the driver as possible more at fault if a pedestrian has crossed from the offside rather than the nearside, based on the assumption that the driver ought to have had more time to react to a pedestrian crossing from the offside due to the distance / time they were in the carriageway prior to the collision.
Whether this is still the case, I cannot say, but logically...
There are obviously variables to this - ie parked vehicles, width of the road, light and weather conditions, height of the pedestrian, running / walking /actions of the pedestrian, point of impact on the vehicle, nature of the road, zones of invisibility, speeds involved etc etc. But as a rule of thumb, accidents involving pedestrian crossing from the nearside were much less likely to result in a prosecution against the driver than one crossing from the offside.
Don't ask me how I know.....
But would the Police be interested in such an in depth investigation as they often got criticised for doing the insurance companies donkeywork...
But I agree,  a dash cam would be very beneficial in these circumstances determining exactly what occurred immediately prior to a collision....

[Viral_Jim]

I do wonder why, when so many newer cars have all round cameras that do few (maybe none?) Do what Teslas can do and allow you to record the footage just by plugging in a USB/HDD. Seems like it wouldn't be a hard feature to implement compared to some of the useless sh!te that does make it onto production cars.

Even OH's 8 yr old Evoque has a load of cameras on it, so it's not like it's new technology 

[TheBoy]

Not sure how "easy" it is for a manufacturer to implement and stay within the law.  Technically, dash cams break privacy laws, so they would have to find a way round that (as do video doorbells, which is why you are supposed to electronically mask bits, but who does that?)

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

A bloke at work who has a Tesla which apparently has built in cameras, disabled them because he drives it like he stole it.
He recently had a collision with a cyclist and the cyclist died.
He says it wasnt his fault, so if he is telling the truth, I imagine he deeply regrets disabling the cameras.
Plod took the car away for examination (to download info from it ?) and he has no idea when he will get it back.
Although he could be behind bars, or at least disqualified by the time they release it , so it may be a moot point.

[Doctor Gollum]

He might have turned them off for him to see, but the data will be merrily squirrelled away for development purposes by Tesla to sell to the highest bidder

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

He is a clever man with electronics.Its what he does for a living.  More likely he disabled them / removed them altogether.
Having said that, surely a bit of black sticky tape would "disable them. 

[Marks DTM Calib]

I do wonder why, when so many newer cars have all round cameras that do few (maybe none?) Do what Teslas can do and allow you to record the footage just by plugging in a USB/HDD. Seems like it wouldn't be a hard feature to implement compared to some of the useless sh!te that does make it onto production cars.

Even OH's 8 yr old Evoque has a load of cameras on it, so it's not like it's new technology 

Very simple, and its one that cost Tesla massive sums (as they are rather stupid).

Dashcams burn out the flash memory, this mullered a pile of Tesla main controllers a few years ago.......and probably still is. So a Dashcam setup needs replaceable memory.

There are other challenges also, a dashcam is a complete standalone solution with its own power etc, this is critical as it does not write to flash continuously, rather in chunks, so lose the power supply during an impact on a car wide system, and you can corrupt the whole flash device and would certainly miss the 'interesting bit', the internal battery/super-cap on a standard dashcam removes this issue.

Its a feature we keep looking at trying to get a solution to but, its got major issues and you can image what would happen in the courts if a system failed to record 

[Viral_Jim]

Fair enough, clearly not so easy  .

I do remember the Tesla onboard memory issue (allegedly fixed with an upgrade to MCU2 IIRC - but I guess only time will tell). Although I thought it was as much to do with Tesla harvesting everyone's data for their own benefit as it was dashcam recording. I suppose ultimately its not as marketable as a feature compared to having your car go off and park itself, come back when you call, talk to FaceAcheBook and X (formally known as Sh!tter) and the other assorted bobbins that seems to be what people are after. 

[Mister Rog]

Get a dashcam.

You're driving along, early evening, low sun, and rain, heading North so sun is behind. Within the speed limit and no drink or drugs.

A person runs out and hits the offside front quarter of your car. Head through windscreen. An eye witness turned out to be unreliable. Now of course the "experts" will have an opinion but as far as the police are concerned it's hard evidence that matters. A dash cam may or may not have recorded the actual impact, but it will show what did NOT happen IE: a front-on collision, and it will also have recorded other circumstances and events.

This is not me, but someone I know who is now a mental wreck due to the uncertainty, and serious injury of another.

Unfortunately, no longer a "serious injury". A person has died.
I say again, get a dashcam.

[MikeyBikey]

I was recently rear ended by an electric Range Rover whilst stationary in my Scimitar. I'm 1200kg he's the best part of 3000kg. Wasn't fast but boy it was a shove. Over £7k for my repairs alone. Thank god I had a dashcam. It was 7am on a wet January morning but thankfully it clearly showed I stopped and was then hit some 10 seconds later. It was only a cheap and cheerful one but the lesson was learned from 2 years previously when a driver crossed a roundabout lane, hit my car, then parked in my lane on the roundabout infront of me, claiming I'd hit him.... I didnt have a camera then...

[Andy B]

...... Thank god I had a dashcam. It was 7am on a wet January morning but thankfully it clearly showed I stopped and was then hit some 10 seconds later. .....

I had a similar thing. Sat in a queue, about 3 or 4 cars back from the traffic lights, lights changed & every thing started to move but the car infront stalled. I then got hit up the backside! The girl that hit me then said .... "you didn't move!" 
Ages later I was asked to fill in an accident report by my insurers .... who was where etc. I phoned to question why I needed to. As soon as I said I'd a dash cam that showed I was stationary when hit they said don't bother with the form & they'd sort it.