Dash Cameras: Should You Have One, and How They Win Cases

Published July 18, 2017 · Injury Law Basics

The other driver ran the red light on Far Hills Avenue, hit your passenger side, and then told the officer that you were the one who ran it. No witnesses stayed. The crash report lists the cause as "undetermined," and the other driver's insurer has just denied your claim because its insured "disputes liability." Twenty years ago that was the end of the story for a lot of injured people. Today, a camera the size of a deck of cards can change it completely.

I spent nineteen years as a Dayton police officer before I began practicing law, and the hardest crashes to sort out were never the serious ones. They were the ones where two honest-sounding people told opposite stories and the physical evidence could support either. Video solves that problem. This post explains what a dash camera captures, how footage decides the most common fault disputes, and how our office gets video from trucks, buses, and businesses before it disappears.

What a 2017 dash camera actually does

Consumer dash cameras have become cheap and good. For fifty to two hundred dollars you can buy a unit that mounts to the windshield, powers on with the car, and records continuously in short clips to a memory card. When the card fills, the oldest clips are overwritten. Most models include a motion sensor that automatically "locks" the clip recorded during a hard impact so it is not erased, and many stamp each frame with the date, time, speed, and GPS location. Some add a second camera facing the rear window or the cabin.

If you buy one, mount it where it does not block your view through the windshield, and learn how to pull the clip off the card the same day. A camera that overwrites your crash footage three days later has not helped you.

The disputes video settles

The same handful of fault arguments show up over and over, and each is exactly the kind of question a short video answers.

Red lights and left turns. Intersection crashes are almost always a fight over who had the green. A forward-facing camera shows the color of your signal at the moment you entered the intersection. That is the whole case.

Left of center and lane changes. When a driver drifts across the line on a two-lane road in Greene County, or cuts across your lane on I-75 and then claims you sideswiped him, the footage shows where each vehicle was relative to the painted lines in the seconds before contact.

Rear-end collisions. The following driver is usually responsible for a rear-end crash, and the common defense is that you "stopped short" or "cut in." Footage showing the traffic ahead of you was already stopped takes that defense away.

Phantom and hit-and-run drivers. If someone forces you off the road and leaves, your own uninsured motorist claim may depend on proving a vehicle you never touched actually existed. Video of that vehicle, even without a legible plate, is powerful corroboration.

Will a jury see it?

Yes, if it is handled properly. Ohio's evidence rules require that a recording be authenticated before it is admitted, which under Evid.R. 901 generally means a witness with knowledge testifies that the video is what it claims to be and fairly shows what happened. For a dash camera, that is usually the owner explaining when it was installed, how it records, and that the clip has not been edited. It is not a difficult standard, but it is a reason never to trim, crop, or "clean up" a clip yourself. Give the whole file to your lawyer.

Preserving your own footage

If you have a camera and you are in a crash:

1. Make sure everyone is safe and call 911. Nothing about the camera matters before that.
2. Do not keep driving for days on the same card. Every minute of recording risks overwriting the clip if the impact lock did not trigger.
3. As soon as you can, copy the entire memory card to a computer and to a second location. Do not copy just the "good part."
4. Do not post the clip on social media. The other driver's insurer and its lawyers will see it before we have.

The same rules apply to the photographs you take at the scene; our earlier post on what to photograph after a crash walks through that checklist.

The video you do not own, and how we get it

Most crash victims do not have a dash camera. That does not mean there is no video. Cameras have quietly appeared almost everywhere a crash can happen.

Commercial trucks. Many fleets now run forward-facing cameras that save clips when the truck brakes hard or swerves, and some transmit those clips to the carrier's safety office within minutes. If you were hit by a semi, that footage exists somewhere, and the carrier knows where. Truck cases already involve a long list of records a lawyer must demand immediately, as we explained in why truck crash cases are different; event video now belongs at the top of that list.

Buses and police cruisers. Transit buses, including RTA buses in Dayton, and most school buses carry multiple cameras. Police dash and body cameras record the vehicles' positions and often the other driver's first version of events, which is frequently different from the version the insurance company hears later.

Businesses and homes. Gas stations, banks, restaurants, apartment complexes, and a growing number of homeowners run security cameras pointed at the street.

Here is the problem: nobody is required to keep any of this unless they are asked. Most business systems overwrite in seven to thirty days. By the time an injured person is out of the hospital and thinking about a claim, the footage may already be gone.

That is why our office sends written preservation letters within days of being retained. A preservation letter tells the trucking company, the bus operator, the city, or the business that litigation is reasonably anticipated and identifies the specific footage, by date, time, and camera location, that must be kept. If a company receives that letter and destroys the video anyway, the court can instruct the jury to assume the footage would have hurt the company. Most comply. But the letter has to go out before the overwrite date, not after. The same urgency applies to the other driver's phone records, as we described in how we get the other driver's phone records.

What this means for you

A dash camera is one of the cheapest forms of insurance you can buy, and unlike your auto policy, it works for you rather than for a company. If you drive a lot of miles, drive at night, or commute on I-70 and I-75, buy one and learn how to save the file.

If you have already been hurt and you do not have a camera, assume someone else does. The truck that hit you, the bus behind you, the gas station at the corner, or the officer who responded may be holding the footage that proves your case. Those recordings have a shelf life measured in days, and the insurance company denying your claim is not going to ask anyone to preserve them. We will.