there are several types of cameras offered the most popular/ cheaper model is offered by heartland america for $79.00
records in AVI format onto a 20GB sd card

when I was in school one of my instructors had a supplier of a top of the line system that records day and night onto a 300+ gb hard drive the system was almost $1300 you install. the same dash cam system that LEOs use

pricey but I feel it would take alot of the guess work out of what really happened in a crash. he showed us a vid from his dash a car in front of him hit a large chunk of metal which gave them a blow out and tossed the chunk in the air where it hit his hood and almost came through the wind shield.

anybody have any feed back if they use one?

i wished i had a camera 5 hours ago a car ran me almost completly outa my lane at least would been cool footage.

I would also like to have one, but may be used agaist you also. would love to show someone how many four wheelers cut me off in a day.

YES. I saw in our company news letter that our trucks in Los Angeles have cameras installed that look forward and at the driver. However, it's not on all the time. It's hook up to sense the truck making sudden movements and it's there to see the vehicles that cut off or cause the truck to be in an unsafe position. The supervisor will download the camera at the end of the shift and if it's been actactivated the supervisor and the driver will sit down and discuss the situation. It's not there to punish the driver but to help him recognize if he could have done any thing different. So they say.

Personally I would not want a camera staring at me while I'm driving. But the numbers back up the decision to install the cameras so they will never come out. The news letter also said the drivers don't mind the idea but I know the big boss there and I know what he's capable of doing with numbers. It's just like the tac-o-graph we used for many years. It can either clear you or hang you.

On board cameras are a inexpensive defense against the ambulance chasers & stoopit people out there.

You will not see very many police cars without one.
Theirs have good night vision & FM mics to record you and them on the same recorder.

Cost wise, you pay from a reliability standpoint since the units need to be in service sometimes 24x7.
As important, the devices are usually built into a locked container so the driver of the vehicle cannot tamper with the recordings.
This is when VHS tapes were the norm.

Now you can use a DVD recorder and those are fairly difficult to tamper with and not leave tracks.
I don't know that a locked container is all that necessary anymore.

I'm definately going to put a dash cam in my rig once I get going.

Looking at Motorola's Mobile Video Enforcer

Same units some LEO's use, with pre event recording, good picure quality and large storage capacity.

It's a bit pricey but cheap insurance against idiotic drivers who cause an accident then try to blame you.

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I'm a man..........And I can change..........If I have to..........I guess.

My friend gave me a digital camera, when plugged into the USB port it acts as a web cam. I down loaded some software that was only 19.95 to register. I run the camera on the dash and record on my hard drive. It works great, I'm looking for a camera that records on a SD card. My friend uses a recorder he bought for about $200.00 that records on a SD card.

I dunno, I guess if a person wants to fork over the money and install it themselves it might be OK. But I'm not sure how well it would stand up in court if you do it yourself. (Scum-bag-lawyer to well paid for "expert" - "But is it not possible that the driver could have tampered with this camera??")

OTOH, if it is a company installed thing, it seems to me like it is just to damn much "big brother watching you."

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