Jim's lucky he wasn't more seriously hurt at the time, but he's definitely had to deal with a lot since then. Injuries on top of then having to deal with whatever else has been involved. It's good that he has a witness on camera being very definitive about who was at fault. That's as clear as you can get. Hopefully that has been helpful. I would imagine you don't usually have a witness on camera like that, either because the police didn't have a body camera, a witness didn't stay or maybe they weren't so sure about what happened. I guess for an accident with injuries the police always do an in-depth investigation. I've only been in minor accidents before, with no injuries, so the police usually haven't done much when taking a report. I don't think they even tried to take a position on who was at fault. My first thought when looking at this video was, the police actually were trying to determine who was at fault. Which makes perfect sense, but because I haven't been in an accident with injuries, I haven't observed that in very minor accidents.
For the past few years I've had a dash camera in my car. Sometimes it turns off for some reason, but I'll unplug it and plug it back in. I think I got it during a Black Friday sale at Walmart several years ago. I hadn't planned on getting one, but I think me and my dad saw it at Walmart or in their sales paper and just thought it's worth having. It might not be as bad in the U.S., but in some countries a lot of people have dash cameras because some people commit fraud by purposefully making cars hit them by stopping short. (maybe even darting in quickly and also faking injuries to get even more money) So then they can have video evidence to show that they weren't at fault. That's kind of what I was thinking more about when we got it.
But I've also been in minor accidents before where other people were at fault and it would have been good to have video in those instances. When I was really young someone once hit the back of the car I was in and may have hardly done anything to it, maybe not even a scratch, but they drove off. Another instance was where someone turned into my car, but by the time they hit my car they were almost parallel and they only damaged 1 door and the mirror just folded in, as it could do without maybe any damage. But they claimed they had a green arrow and I think we convinced the cops to go back down to the light, as we had pulled off further down the road, to make sure they noted that there was no arrow there that could ever have been green. They were supposed to yield to us. (they had a green light to go straight, but they left turned in to our car, which had already nearly completed making a right) It might have been that instance where we had to end up suing them still. Maybe they didn't have insurance or they weren't being cooperative, I forget. I just remembered making very detailed diagrams and still have them on my computer. (I must have been into weather well enough then that I had all the current weather conditions on there from the nearest hourly observation)
Those are the other kinds of situations where I wanted it. And in case of road rage, which I've never had an issue with. If someone cuts me off, which doesn't happen much because I don't drive much, I won't do anything. Never a horn, never a look, nothing. (safest thing to do)
Dash cameras are definitely something people should consider. This is not the one I have, so I have no idea how good it is, but here is one from Walmart for $25.01:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/onn-Dash-Cam-with-2-7-Display-Screen/574061299
I think I paid around that for the one I have that has a similar design to that one. Of course this is the cheap end of them.
Florida is terrible for bad drivers. They often leave the scene of an accident. When it comes to accidents involving serious injury or death, it might be every few days that it happens here in Tampa. It's on the local news constantly. Those kind are usually cars hitting a pedestrian or cyclist, but having it on your car could help someone, or their family, when someone has been hit in those instances. And I guess there are drunk drivers everywhere, but we have a ton of those around here too. I think that's why we have so many hit and runs.
I see people running red lights around here rather often, sometimes by up to a second, though the other day it might have been around 2 seconds. I'm not so sure they didn't speed up. They were driving a bit erratically too after it. I try to always really look carefully when I first begin moving after a light turns green, just in case someone goes through it in that few seconds after it turns. But you can't watch every single intersection as you're driving down the road though. Of course having proof that someone caused an accident is little comfort when it comes to injuries. But if it can help the overall process after an accident, it's worth it. |