So I've relented and ordered a dash cam

[Northwarks]

I'm not one to dwell on things, life is way too short so I'm quite a laid back driver behind the wheel and never stress about other drivers actions or let it spoil my day - I just take exception to the fact a small number of idiots are deliberately trying to force others to hit them for financial gain e.g. not an accident.

Would I report another driver for rubbish driving, even with camera footage ... ? I can't be bothered to be honest, I see appalling driving and general bullying of drivers everyday from cars, vans and trucks - some I find quite entertaining to watch ... from a distance  - I guess people have different views of what constitues life threatening or dangerous, when wifey is sat next to me she has a totally different view to me and thinks everyone is driving too fast and is far less tolerant of idiot drivers - Which makes for a fun drive down the M5 annually .

For me personally I'd draw the line at where I had to take proper avoiding action (not just lifting off) or damaged my car as a result of some idiot.

[Lyonspride]

17 hours ago, jeff oakley said:

We have dash cameras in all of our vans and for protection they are good, but there is a problem with them .The problem is we now have a whole army of self righteous wannabee traffic officers deciding they are going to report anyone they do not like.

We have had footage sent in showing our vans overtaking, "Breaking the speed limit" "forcing me off the road" and more often than not the complaint will contain lines like, "I had my small child with me" or "my aged relation" and yet when we look at our own footage they are not speeding, not doing anything wrong the footage sent in is distorted, wrong speed shown etc. Yet the people who have no idea of road use are arbitrarily deciding they are in the right and want action from us and the police.

Now if you are driving your car and you have been reported for an incident by such a person, unless you have saved your own footage you have no proof of what actually happened. If you save it and  a police officer demands the footage then you may find you have incriminated your self not necessarily for the claimed wrong from the original complaint. Add in anyone who drives anything remotely sporty is more likely to be the subject of a complaint as any overtaking appears to be a thing of the past with many roadusers not wanting you to pass.

In some EU states it is illegal to film other roadusers but the UK police love this whole new army of snoopers that they have recruited. YouTube has whole channels devoted to people going "OOH look at this" It make the Stasi look like amateurs at getting people to snitch on each other the way this has spread.

I am not a conspiracy nut but the surveillance of every one of us by people who feel justified just in case seems wrong to me. A chap I know who has a camera fitted says that if it is the other persons fault he will wave the chip as a weapon of proof, if he is at fault he will eat it and hope the other person has not got one. Are we so afraid of every thing in life we need footage, if so how long before we all feel justified to walk around with a go pro just in case?

I find it very sad we have got here

 

Well you see I use a dashcam everyday, yes because of the nutcases, but primarily in defence against those who make up their own version of the highway code, those who use their vehicles as a weapon to enforce road rules that don't exist.

The problem with these people is they all try to enforce socially derived rules, which vary greatly from group to group and location to location, making them extremely unpredictable. For example the belief that cyclists have to hug the kerb, the belief that if their car is bigger or more expensive they have the right of way, the belief that motorbike filtering is illegal.
Prime example is the misconception that overtaking on hatch markings is always illegal, this has very nearly got me into serious trouble on more than one occasion, when your overtaking legally and the 70 something year old in his Wagon R, swerves at you as your overtaking him. Equally people who swerve into your path because they think your using the RH lane to skip traffic (actually no i'm turning right).

Yes, I post footage to Youtube, yes sometimes I involve the Police,  example of a woman with 2 kids overtaking an articulated lorry to run a red light on the wrong side of the road (at the B'ham road, Chester road junction in Kidderminster, for anyone that knows it). The problem for me is that as many UK drivers are becoming more and more aggressive, and equally as many are turning "passive-aggressive" (deliberately winding people up), the only defence we have is the dashcam......... If I see someone wind up another driver and that driver then has an accident, ill hand over the footage so that the real aggressor can be prosecuted.

I see incidents every day, most minor, few potentially serious and every time one of those incidents could have affected me or mine, it makes me glad I have the dashcam.
 

[DonPeffers]

18 hours ago, jeff oakley said:

any overtaking appears to be a thing of the past with many roadusers not wanting you to pass.

 

From what I have seen many do not know how to overtake safely and it many instances just pull out (still in top gear I'm guessing if the speed progression is anything to go by) and gradually overtake.

[jeff oakley]

1 hour ago, Lyonspride said:

 

Well you see I use a dashcam everyday, yes because of the nutcases, but primarily in defence against those who make up their own version of the highway code, those who use their vehicles as a weapon to enforce road rules that don't exist.

The problem with these people is they all try to enforce socially derived rules, which vary greatly from group to group and location to location, making them extremely unpredictable. For example the belief that cyclists have to hug the kerb, the belief that if their car is bigger or more expensive they have the right of way, the belief that motorbike filtering is illegal.
Prime example is the misconception that overtaking on hatch markings is always illegal, this has very nearly got me into serious trouble on more than one occasion, when your overtaking legally and the 70 something year old in his Wagon R, swerves at you as your overtaking him. Equally people who swerve into your path because they think your using the RH lane to skip traffic (actually no i'm turning right).

Yes, I post footage to Youtube, yes sometimes I involve the Police,  example of a woman with 2 kids overtaking an articulated lorry to run a red light on the wrong side of the road (at the B'ham road, Chester road junction in Kidderminster, for anyone that knows it). The problem for me is that as many UK drivers are becoming more and more aggressive, and equally as many are turning "passive-aggressive" (deliberately winding people up), the only defence we have is the dashcam......... If I see someone wind up another driver and that driver then has an accident, ill hand over the footage so that the real aggressor can be prosecuted.

I see incidents every day, most minor, few potentially serious and every time one of those incidents could have affected me or mine, it makes me glad I have the dashcam.
 

I understand your frustrations but I drive over 40000 miles each year and I see a handful of incidents in all that time. Most are just ordinary people who make an error, not homicidal maniacs who are out to kill everyone. Maybe I am lucky or maybe I am more aware of the surroundings and drive defensively at all times and avoid getting stressed and reacting to others negatively. 

The example that you gave of the woman I can see that as being worthy of reporting, but it isn't your job to police the roads, that is the job of the police and as they gave continued to cut and cut, whilst keeping every layer of upper management and rank, they now rely on people like you to do their job. It is not right that we are heading on a slippery slope of public investigation, public trial and public justice.

Take the vigilantes who are trapping paedophiles, most would say well done, but the question is if it is so easy for a person in his bedroom to do that why aren't the police doing it? They had the resource to investigate celebrities but not a loner from Bognor!

When I was burgled, I tracked down my stolen goods on EBay the same day as the burglary and the police then went and caught the person involved. They apologised and said they do not have the man power to do that job and as we are insured it is not a big deal, but if someone went into a bank and took £20k they would act differently even though they are insured.

As I said it is up to everyone to do what they feel right for them, for me the way we are encouraged to become informers for the authorities, for what in the main are minor errors on the roads is wrong.

[Lyonspride]

 

1 hour ago, jeff oakley said:

I understand your frustrations but I drive over 40000 miles each year and I see a handful of incidents in all that time. Most are just ordinary people who make an error, not homicidal maniacs who are out to kill everyone. Maybe I am lucky or maybe I am more aware of the surroundings and drive defensively at all times and avoid getting stressed and reacting to others negatively. 

The example that you gave of the woman I can see that as being worthy of reporting, but it isn't your job to police the roads, that is the job of the police and as they gave continued to cut and cut, whilst keeping every layer of upper management and rank, they now rely on people like you to do their job. It is not right that we are heading on a slippery slope of public investigation, public trial and public justice.

Take the vigilantes who are trapping paedophiles, most would say well done, but the question is if it is so easy for a person in his bedroom to do that why aren't the police doing it? They had the resource to investigate celebrities but not a loner from Bognor!

When I was burgled, I tracked down my stolen goods on EBay the same day as the burglary and the police then went and caught the person involved. They apologised and said they do not have the man power to do that job and as we are insured it is not a big deal, but if someone went into a bank and took £20k they would act differently even though they are insured.

As I said it is up to everyone to do what they feel right for them, for me the way we are encouraged to become informers for the authorities, for what in the main are minor errors on the roads is wrong.

^^ Without having Police on every street corner, it's the only way and that's assuming the Police officers themselves did not have hands tied by their superiors, indeed many leave the force because they can't actually do their job due to bureaucracy and political correctness, there's a fear of internal investigations, my own GF worked for the Police in a civilian and said it was terrible.

The paedo catchers I strongly disagree with, temping someone, some sad lonely man into meeting a young girl? Actively pursuing him? How often is that simply creating a monster from someone who was otherwise no threat?

Your lost property, really there's nobody better to identify that than you, the Police would have no idea what they're looking for. I think a degree of self investigation is a good thing, working with the Police etc. The issue is when they refuse to go get your stuff back because it's in a traveller park, or refuse to attend because the thief is an informant ("not in the public interest to prosecute").

In the case of bad driving, it may be the aggressor has friends with influence in the force or local politicians, this certainly seems to be the case with a number of instances i've seen on Youtube, one instance in particular where a cyclist was driven into deliberately causing horrific injuries, they apparently could not identify who owned and was driving the car despite the thing being taxed/insured AND there being footage partially showing the drivers face.


 

[Northwarks]

8 hours ago, jeff oakley said:

I understand your frustrations but I drive over 40000 miles each year and I see a handful of incidents in all that time. Most are just ordinary people who make an error, not homicidal maniacs who are out to kill everyone. Maybe I am lucky or maybe I am more aware of the surroundings and drive defensively at all times and avoid getting stressed and reacting to others negatively. 

Well said  - Its very subjective, one persons "he was trying to kill us all" is another's  "driving mistake and I'm moving on" - I've driven a lot in Southern California for work and they are a tolerant bunch out there, if you make a mistake people just stick a hand up to apologise and everyone moves on .. everyone is in a rush, the traffic is insane around LA but folks just work with each other to move along, I found my self in the wrong lane approaching a junction once - totally my mistake, I had to move across 6 lanes of traffic, not once did a driver block me or accelerate to make life hard, they just lift off and let you move over - probably cursing the fact its a rental and obviously a tourist but I can't see that happening on the M25/M6 in rush hour somehow

Clearly not all of the US is probably that forgiving, I imagine Texas or New York is a tad different  

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Dashcam now fitted and working...

[DonPeffers]

On 12/1/2017 at 18:02, jeff oakley said:

YouTube has whole channels devoted to people going "OOH look at this" It make the Stasi look like amateurs at getting people to snitch on each other the way this has spread.

I am not a conspiracy nut but the surveillance of every one of us by people who feel justified just in case seems wrong to me. A chap I know who has a camera fitted says that if it is the other persons fault he will wave the chip as a weapon of proof, if he is at fault he will eat it and hope the other person has not got one. Are we so afraid of every thing in life we need footage, if so how long before we all feel justified to walk around with a go pro just in case?

I find it very sad we have got here

Film fiction about a man who films his entire life after being wrongly accused of murders    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363095/

Very extreme fictional example but who knows what the future holds?