Road traffic accidents are a leading cause of personal injury. The road safety charity Brake reports that, on average, someone is killed or seriously injured on UK roads every 17 minutes. In 2023, that equated to 1,695 deaths and 28,087 serious injuries.
While some road traffic accidents leave those involved with little more than a damaged vehicle and a few minor bruises, the effects of others can be catastrophic.
At Mooneerams Solicitors, we have successfully recovered compensation through accident claims for thousands of road users – including drivers, passengers, cyclists, and horse riders – whose lives have been shattered by road traffic accidents caused by someone else’s carelessness.
With accident statistics like those quoted above, it’s unsurprising that more and more people (some 13 million according to this poll) are installing dashcams to keep themselves and their families safe on the roads. Not only do these nifty devices help users feel safer, but they can also provide invaluable evidence in the event of an accident and you intend to claim compensation.
What is a dashcam?
The term ‘dashcam’ is short for ‘dashboard camera’. A digital video recorder usually sits on the vehicle’s dashboard and records the road in front as you drive. Some dashcams can also record what happens behind your car. Other road users, like cyclists, motorcyclists, and horse riders, can similarly use helmet cams and body cameras.
When you start your vehicle, a dashcam automatically turns on and springs to life. It records continuously on a loop, storing each section of your journey on an SD card.
How can dashcams help your personal injury claim?
You can only claim compensation for injuries sustained in a road traffic accident if someone else is to blame. So, unless the other side accepts responsibility, you must prove they were at fault.
Proving fault is often one of the most challenging aspects of a personal injury claim. At Mooneerams, our personal injury solicitors use various forms of evidence to demonstrate the other side’s fault, including independent witness evidence, medical records, and CCTV footage. We use dashcam recordings to boost our clients cases if they are also available.
There’s no doubt that dashcam evidence can significantly increase a client’s chances of winning their claim and getting compensation from the third-party insurers.
Dashcam footage usually bears a timestamp, so it can be invaluable as a means of piecing together what happened and when in the run-up to an accident. It’s particularly useful when the parties’ recollections differ or if the incident was a hit-and-run. Establishing who was involved in an accident quickly and the extent of their involvement significantly speeds up the claims process.
Dashcams aren’t subject to the same bias as humans can sometimes be, so the evidence they provide is entirely impartial. It’s difficult to tamper with dashcam recordings, thus making it hard for an insurance company to dispute evidence that plays out right in front of their eyes! As a result, with high-quality dashcam evidence proving their client’s fault, the insurance company is left with no choice other than to settle the claim much earlier than it would otherwise.
Do dashcams have any drawbacks?
In the often chaotic aftermath of an accident in which you suffered injury, your recollections of what exactly happened may be vague. While you might be sure you were not to blame, dashcam footage captured by your vehicle or someone else’s dashcam may tell a different story.
If that happens, you can still claim personal injury even if you were partly at fault. The law calls this ‘contributory negligence’. Your case might involve contributory negligence if, for example, you were driving over the speed limit at the time of your accident or were not wearing a seatbelt.
We explain the concept of contributory negligence in more detail here. In a nutshell, if dashcam footage shows that you contributed somehow to the accident, you are still entitled to compensation, but the amount you receive will be reduced to reflect the percentage for which you were at fault.
Of course, if the dashcam evidence proves you were wholly at fault, you won’t succeed in a claim.
While it can be galling to learn that dashcam footage places your version of events in doubt, its existence can assist the swift resolution of your claim.
Insurance companies will make every effort to reduce the amount they have to pay, so they would likely have raised the issue of contributory negligence even without the dashcam evidence.
Dashcam evidence tells the truth, and since the aim of personal injury litigation is to find out ‘the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,’ we can’t complain when it works against us.
What should you do next?
If you’ve been involved in a road traffic accident and have dashcam footage that may be relevant, you must preserve it and ensure it doesn’t get overwritten.
Some dashcams automatically lock captured video clips when they detect a sudden impact, which prevents them from being overwritten by later footage.
Your dashcam manual should explain how your dashcam works and will walk you through any steps you should take to safeguard crucial recordings.
For obvious reasons, you should wait until you’ve stopped driving and safely pulled over before trying to safeguard any footage.
When you contact personal injury solicitors Mooneerams for advice on your case, tell the expert you speak to that you have the dash cam recordings.
We’ll review the recordings and all the other relevant evidence as soon as possible after we receive them. With luck, we’ll be able to use the dashcam evidence to support your claim and secure the highest compensation settlement possible for you!
Call Mooneerams Solicitors on 029 2048 3615 and speak with a member of our award-winning personal injury team about the possibility of pursuing a personal injury claim.
