Every camera company is a bad company.

Amen. There won’t be a camera in the truck I driver for even 5 seconds. I’m out. I could care less if I had to rent a car to go 2000 miles home. Not 5 seconds.

 

I think it must be our straight shooter, tell it like it is no nonsense approach to life's problems, and the fact that one of us is undead.

 

Yeah, ya know, @Frank Speak takes being undead to a whole new level.....

 

You a right or lefty? I dig righty and stash forward, so it's the danger zone when you're moving the seat forward or back.

Which serves them right. I always keep the seat in the optimal position anyhow.

 

Also makes a dandy spot to make a peanut butter and jelly sammich.

 

I ignore the camera it ignores me. If it says distracted driving I wave at it. Safety says you been good lately no one has called about you. I don't care about the camera

 

Cameras don’t ignore people. It’s the people who monitor those cameras that we hope are ignoring us. What if you’re making love with your wife? Do you do that knowing there’s a camera watching? Do you or your wife get undressed while the camera is watching ? Do you discuss personal information while the camera is watching or listening?

the point is that the camera is there and you must modify your day to day routine in order to prevent any invasion of privacy. Are you absolutely sure the camera is ignoring you? Are you willing to take that chance? More to the point, why should anyone take that chance? How important is privacy to you? Should you give up that privacy for the sake of “Safety”
Especially when there is no evidence that driver facing cameras prevent accidents.

 

I've written a lot on this subject.
All cameras, whether driver-facing, or facing outward are being used for nefarious reasons today. The argument that outward facing cameras protect drivers is just ridiculous. If they were meant to protect drivers, they wouldn't send footage to a third-party, or to your company. They'd simply be designed to store it on the device. If Bill Gates told you that sending a continuous record of your computer activities to Microsoft was a feature to protect YOU, and not to benefit Microsoft, would you believe him?

Actually, and this happens more often than you might think, an outward-facing camera often captures a perspective of an incident that can indict the driver without illustrating a mitigating circumstance outside of the field of vision that created the reason the driver did something seemingly wrong. When this happens, and when any legal situation happens, the camera, or footage from it, can become evidence that you are required to give to the court, and you can be punished for withholding or destroying it. Essentially, it's forced self-incrimination.

I understand the argument that employers have, that they need to protect their investment. Since we truck drivers have no interest in protecting our very lives, obviously drivers can't be trusted with such an expensive piece of machinery—which is what really matters here. But to digress, I still understand their position. This is why this is a natural disagreement—every bit as much as a disagreement about wages or anything else drivers might negotiate with employers over. For example, if drivers want more pay, the employer is faced with less profit if they agree to it. Imagine the company trying to argue that the driver should accept less pay because that helps the company's bottom line. What idiot would be persuaded with such an argument? Why would a driver agree to any other adverse negotiation, such as giving the company carte blanch to interpret the safety level of every petty thing a driver does behind the wheel (most of which aren't even dangerous). If the camera wasn't primarily about posture, it would only cite and deduct points for things drivers do that have any kind of chance actually causing an accident.

As such, I don't think inward facing cameras are any worse than outward facing ones if they're all wired to tattle. Frankly I think that the cameras have actually made truck driving more dangerous, and I'll tell you why:
Trucking used to be a job that people got in order to work alone, and without someone watching. We all know that. This was constantly emphasized in decades of culture and media. As soon as people started watching and nitpicking drivers with cameras, a lot of good truckers no longer wanted the job. A-holes claim that only truckers that want to break laws quit, but no, that's not the case. Most truckers are good people and only jerks automatically assume people truck just because they like to break laws. Those truckers are now either retired or working on jobs in the civilian sector that don't have cameras, or are unlikely to use them to nitpick their workers.
As a result of all this quitting, trucking companies have had to hire replacement drivers, and most of these drivers are new and green. The newer, and more inexperienced drivers are triggering the dash cams more (since they're new and green)—creating an appearance that the cameras are doing their job well in catching violations. However, the overall rate of trucking accidents hasn't gone down since the cameras have been put in use; it's actually gone up. This is because the cameras have made the job into one fewer people like doing, and the desperate hiring practices trucking companies must use to find sufficient drivers now result in worse candidates, and eventually more turnover (so senior drivers are actually less likely to eventually exist).

 

So...Windows 11?

 

For the most part, I agree with you, although I have had an outward-facing camera save my butt.