‘Black box’ video cameras should be fitted to all motor vehicles

Hopefully, the day will come when all cars, vans, and trucks are fitted with ‘Total Event Data Recording’ cameras. Footage of driving is looped over and over on SD cards: when there’s a smash the driver has to hand over the SD card. Sometimes the driver will be exhonerated. Other times the fault will be plain for all to see.

In the US, SmartCam is used by fleet operators to improve driver behaviour. With a forward-facing camera and one trained on the driver, every little transgression is recorded. Busted drivers have to take part in an education program. There must be lots of teachers on that program…

Interestingly, SmartCam is also used by families (rightly) worried about teen drivers. Watch this video for a whole series of roadside transgressions by teens: applying make-up, not paying attention, falling asleep, texting, and just being plain stupid.



DriveCam costs $1000 a year per vehicle. Not cheap. New to the UK are in-car cameras from Roadhawk and Smart Witness Journey Recorder. At about £300 these cameras are not much more expensive than a satnav and could help genuinely good drivers prove how good they are on the road. But, for 99 percent of the population, there would be a general fear that such a camera would capture normal driving, ie bad driving.

Here’s a video from a Roadhawk user who found out that his car had been taken for a spin - a 125mph spin - by the garage that was meant to be fixing a radiator leak:

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