Jump to content

Dash Cam


Ray

Recommended Posts

It works and this model has a completely separate rear camera and long cable.

Mostly it's just me playing with a gadget but it could be handy one day and meanwhile I'm hoping it will catch some of those spectacular moments that I can never get to the camera in time for.

 

IMG_20190903_172132.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I once realised that I'd been sitting in the cockpit of my sailboat eating and chatting with my wife, to find such a camera trained on us. I strongly felt that it was an invasion of our privacy, a bit like the drone issue, and that maybe these things should be regulated. I spoke to the owner, who assured me it wasn't recording and he intended to leave it pointing at us for the evening. I mention this, as I suspect we have not been the only people only people on the Broads that have found dash cams intrusive and uncomfortable. I'm sure most people use them with respect, but in my mind, it is a very sad day when the Broads has become a part of the surveillance society. 

  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

when I am on the broads I do have a go pro type camera and a digital camera to hand, but unless I am for example recording the incoming wooden boats or a particular event, most of the time the camera would be off. as they too have limited storage / battery capacity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Bob said:

I once realised that I'd been sitting in the cockpit of my sailboat eating and chatting with my wife, to find such a camera trained on us. I strongly felt that it was an invasion of our privacy, a bit like the drone issue, and that maybe these things should be regulated. I spoke to the owner, who assured me it wasn't recording and he intended to leave it pointing at us for the evening. I mention this, as I suspect we have not been the only people only people on the Broads that have found dash cams intrusive and uncomfortable. I'm sure most people use them with respect, but in my mind, it is a very sad day when the Broads has become a part of the surveillance society. 

Actually I do agree Bob, as often as possible we prefer wild moorings but the point is that it is on while we cruise and people should be able to relax without wondering if they'll end up on Facebook just because a camera happened to catch an awkward moment or holiday fooling around.

I wouldn't like it either... I'm going to remove it!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Ray said:

Actually I do agree Bob, as often as possible we prefer wild moorings but the point is that it is on while we cruise and people should be able to relax without wondering if they'll end up on Facebook just because a camera happened to catch an awkward moment or holiday fooling around.

I wouldn't like it either... I'm going to remove it!

I think that you will regret that decision if you come back to your boat and find that it has been damaged and the offending vessel has made off.

I have cameras facing forward and aft, installed after I was the victim of a hit-and-run. They can see no more than I can if I'm looking out of the windows (less actually, because they can't see out of the side windows). The footage came in useful when a hire boat (under instruction) recently hit my boat and a boat in front of mine, causing damage, then made off.

I would prefer not to have them, but hit-and-run seems to be the norm these days, with cars as well as boats.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was cruising down from Coltishall early one morning, I had my camera running just to record that gorgeous stretch of water, and a kingfisher flashed down the river, I spent hours poring over the video and never found it, it had flown down the wrong side of the boat for the camera to catch it. I would have loved to catch that flash of blue lightning, but truth be told I was happy just to have been there and seen it.

I use a camera or video camera to capture memories, not to catch other people making mistakes.

in the car, the dash cam is there to record any incident that might be needed for insurance, but I do travel daily on probably the worst section of road in the country - the M25 around the dartford tunnel, and some of the driving I see there is diabolical, not to mention dangerous.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I can certainly understand how you feel, I initially bought it after a speeding boat pull our rhond anchor out leaving us adrift. But I didn't consider the privacy implication before I acted.

I have no doubt though that all members here would not abuse recorded footage so I'm not critical of people having them but I was conscious of saying one thing and doing another 

6 minutes ago, Paladin said:

I think that you will regret that decision if you come back to your boat and find that it has been damaged and the offending vessel has made off.

I have cameras facing forward and aft, installed after I was the victim of a hit-and-run. They can see no more than I can if I'm looking out of the windows (less actually, because they can't see out of the side windows). The footage came in useful when a hire boat (under instruction) recently hit my boat and a boat in front of mine, causing damage, then made off.

I would prefer not to have them, but hit-and-run seems to be the norm these days, with cars as well as boats.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Whilst the two, dashcams and drones, may seem similar, they are in fact very different to each other. A dashcam, even one used on a boat is recording what you can normally see from your driving position, whereas a drone is used to capture footage from a vantage point not normally available to the average person. It can become an invasion of privacy because it is being used to overcome the normal limitation of vantage point.

A secondary factor with both is to what purpose the footage captured is used for! Most CCTV is perfectly ok because most of the footage is never even viewed and stored for a temporary period before being deleted unwatched, unless there has been an incident which requires viewing the footage to gain evidence. I view most dashcam usage to be similar. On the other hand a lot of drone footage is stored permanently and shared with many others for entertainment, sometimes at the expense of someone's privacy.

Using a dashcam to protect your car, or boat is perfectly acceptable, unless some of the footage is used to ridicule or embarrass someone as a result of their poor judgement, or helming. For private use and as evidence in the event of an insurance claim, perfectly fine, in my personal opinion.

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What I read above tends to confirm my concerns. Clearly the dash cams are left running when moored up, and clearly this will record people without their permission, which I do see as an invasion of privacy. 

Furthermore, I see no difference in drone or dash cam. We've had a drone hover and record us on our boat at the Horning Church moorings one evening this season. It was noisy, uncomfortable and a little upsetting. Again, an invasion of privacy. Between the dash cams, drones and the considerable increase in dog mess (Potter, Ludham, Acle....), I can see people being put off the idea of a being on the Broads. It's really is not what it was. My wife and I are increasingly staying at our mooring and having days out cycling.
 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Bob said:

What I read above tends to confirm my concerns. Clearly the dash cams are left running when moored up, and clearly this will record people without their permission, which I do see as an invasion of privacy. 

Furthermore, I see no difference in drone or dash cam. We've had a drone hover and record us on our boat at the Horning Church moorings one evening this season. It was noisy, uncomfortable and a little upsetting. Again, an invasion of privacy. Between the dash cams, drones and the considerable increase in dog mess (Potter, Ludham, Acle....), I can see people being put off the idea of a being on the Broads. It's really is not what it was. My wife and I are increasingly staying at our mooring and having days out cycling.
 

The way in which the two are very different is that people fly drones with the express intention of recording whatever they see. Dashcams even on boats are generally only viewed it there has been an incident. Since I purchased my car dashcam it has recorded every one of the 30,000 miles I have done since I purchased it. The only footage I have kept is when my car was hit by a van whilst parked in a car park. 99.9% of the footage has never been viewed and has since been overwritten. My dashcam in HD mode will hold four hours footage before it over writes itself.

The footage of the van hitting me enabled me to get fully recompensed for the damage to my car and resulted in me having a no fault claim which my then insurance provider still tried to penalise me for at insurance renewal time even though they didn't pay out a penny. The van driver denied even being in the car park. Without the dashcam footage it would have meant a fault claim on my insurance. I was with Admiral insurance and like any insurance company they will load your premiums the next year for a no fault claim if they have to pay out. They also load you if you declare an accident that you use a claims company to settle direct with the other parties insurance company. Upon renewal I went to The AA insurance and they don't load your premiums for no fault claims, but would have done if I had not been able to claim fully of the other party with the use of the dashcam.

Most dashcams have a mode where they will start recording as soon as a bump is detected, which I suspect is how a lot of people use them on boats, which actually means they are not recording all the time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

mine (in the car ) does that, if it is switched off it will fire up and start recording following a bump, it will also save any current recording into a secure file (not able to be overwritten), if it recieves a bump while it is travelling - for example a while back I went into a pothole and burst a tyre, the camera was on and recording and it write protected that incident video, so while they may be recording and continually overwriting previous video (from 4 hours ago) anything that triggers the crash sensor is automatically recorded, and saved, so is not overwritten. so only events triggering the camera are ever permenantly saved, for everything else, you would either have to get to the camera within 4 hours and download the video or its gone forever.

At this point its also worth telling people with dash cams to remember to replace their SD cards regularly, after a few years the section of the card that indexes the card becomes full, and then it cannot find the files on the card. so after a year or so of use the card cannot overwrite the old files, so cannot save the new ones, time to swap out for a new card, I have had this happen to me a couple of times (and my dad has had it happen with a usb drive) so I know it can happen.

the good news is there is software out there that can still read the disk once the index is full.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, in some ways, this brings me to my point.

I think a dash cam in car does not invade privacy, as you can rarely see the driver or what they are doing. A dash cam in a boat can and will record the people moored around them, as they are not protected by a tinted windscreen. I do not think that dash cams where ever intended to be used on the Broads. 

I have nothing more to say on this topic:default_smile:. I'm sure you all get my drift, and I do hope it makes people a little more sensitive as to where they aim the camera. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

in bump detecton mode they will fire up for probably about 5 minutes when the bump is triggered, otherwise they wont be recording, if they were left recording, by the time you looked to see what had bumped you the data would probably have been overwritten several times.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK, I can see that some people might think privacy is a joke, but when you have granchildren on your boat enjoying the sun, you simply don't want them to have a camera bearing down on them and then someone you don't know having access to the footage. As for bump mode, with wash and wind, I simply can't imagine how that works on a boat.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, sailor said:

OK, I can see that some people might think privacy is a joke, but when you have granchildren on your boat enjoying the sun, you simply don't want them to have a camera bearing down on them and then someone you don't know having access to the footage. As for bump mode, with wash and wind, I simply can't imagine how that works on a boat.

 

I certainly don't regard privacy as a joke, but, if that's the sort of thing you're concerned about, dashcams have wide angle lenses, so hardly 'bear down'. I think you should be more worried about those who go around with cameras with long-range zooms on them - but most of those, I suggest, are bird-watchers.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Again, you confirm my suspicion, clearly these cameras pick up a lot of continouous image data from a broad field of view, and with increasing definition, this has to be a concern. With facial recognition software and even emerging lip reading software, nobody can expect privacy whist moored up on the Broads. This is surveillance technology. Everyone deserves the right to privacy whilst on holiday.  I would not stand my ground unless I really thought this was a really big issues. I now certainly look for cameras when I moor up, and I'm sure that I am not the only one. Who wants to be captured on video when on holiday ? or have their conversations recorded ? When I was moored up at Horsey the camera was no more than 8 - 10ft away and it took me a few hours before I actually clocked it. I would ask, would you want someone continuously filming you without your consent ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The thing you have to remember, like it or not, but no one has a right to privacy in a public place in this country as the law currently stands. The second thing you need to remember is that 99.9% of dashcam footage NEVER gets watched. It is only normally referred to once there has been an incident.

There is a certain level of irony about your Horsey incident. Had you left your boat, and whilst gone someone came along and broke into your boat, you might well have considered knocking on the boat behind to see if their dashcam had captured anything! Which more than likely it wouldn't have done unless the thief bumped into the other boat first to trigger the dashcam.

There is a well known database of boats and the owner spends a lot of time taking pictures of boats to illustrate that database. Pictures of me on my boat going down the river appear on that database. I didn't give permission, but then again I'm in a public place with no expectation of privacy, not that I mind the pictures being on the database anyway. However, and this is where drones are a lot different to normal cameras, or dashcams, had the owner of the database used a drone to go and film boats on their moorings in a marina where he would not normally have access as a member of the public, then that would be a violation of privacy. The drone having been used to overcome the physical barriers that prevent public access and film in a place where you might have a reasonable expectation of privacy. If pictures of my boat on it's home berth ever appeared on the database then I would be one of the first to complain. Once the boat leaves the marina, then I have no right to privacy. I cannot begin to imagine how many people have pictures or video of me taking my boat through Wroxham bridge. Not a lot I can do about that. Do I care? No, until the day I get it wrong and someone shares it and even then not a lot I can do.

  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, EastCoastIPA said:

and film boats on their moorings in a marina where he would not normally have access as a member of the public, then that would be a violation of privacy.

I wasn't going to put my toe in this particular "water" as I know B - all about the subject but I have a question, as a layman.

What is a public, or private place, in this respect? If you visit a privately owned stately home and pay to enter (and park your car), are you in public, or in private, on private land?

In the case of a private marina, are you in private, on your paid mooring, or are you in a place where the public have access, even if they have had to pay to enter, or moor?

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, sailor said:

Again, you confirm my suspicion, clearly these cameras pick up a lot of continouous image data from a broad field of view, and with increasing definition, this has to be a concern. With facial recognition software and even emerging lip reading software, nobody can expect privacy whist moored up on the Broads. This is surveillance technology. Everyone deserves the right to privacy whilst on holiday.  I would not stand my ground unless I really thought this was a really big issues. I now certainly look for cameras when I moor up, and I'm sure that I am not the only one. Who wants to be captured on video when on holiday ? or have their conversations recorded ? When I was moored up at Horsey the camera was no more than 8 - 10ft away and it took me a few hours before I actually clocked it. I would ask, would you want someone continuously filming you without your consent ?

Unfortunately, we are probably the most surveilled country in the western world. Every city, every town, has CCTV cameras watching your every move. Shops have cameras hidden behind those little dark globes on the ceiling. Many houses have security cameras that will, coincidentally, record images from outside the periphery. Even certain boat yards have zoomable cameras, which seem to serve no purpose other than for entertainment.

Everyone runs the risk of being unwittingly photographed, whether they are doing their weekly shopping, relaxing in the park, or sunning themselves on the open deck of their boat. If that is anathema, perhaps the only solution is to stay indoors with the curtains closed.

But dash cams, even the high quality ones I have, do not compare to the likes of GoPro or even cheap zoom cameras in their ability to capture close-up and detailed images. Nor do they capture sound that well either, unless the source is very, very, close to them.

If you know my address, you can view the front of my house, courtesy of Google Streetview. Change to satellite view and you can see my rear garden and the location of my sheds. 

Regarding the ‘bump’ mode, I don’t find that very satisfactory, unless the setting is set to very sensitive, when even a gust of wind might trigger it. A shopping trolley being scraped down the side of the car won’t set it off, so my dash cams record all the time, with a 4hr write-over window.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Sponsors

    Norfolk Broads Network is run by volunteers - You can help us run it by making a donation

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

For details of our Guidelines, please take a look at the Terms of Use here.