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It's surprising to me how many of those are clearly the fault of the driver (that is, the owner of the cam). I'd think they would be too embarrassed to upload their own (often extremely stupid) errors that lead to accidents.
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Jan 22, 2014 02:35
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I love it when the oncoming drivers drive right up to me and lay on the horn, because they can't see that I can't finish my left turn because a pedestrian decided to start crossing the street with 3 seconds left on the green and they're just poking along at a snail's pace, so I get stuck blocking traffic. Alternately, when I see the pedestrian and won't even enter the intersection to make my left, but the drivers waiting behind me to turn left don't see (or don't care) about the people in the crosswalk and assume I'm just asleep at the wheel and lay on the horn. Generally we'll all be better off cutting each other a little slack. Also: if a driver makes a mistake, laying on the horn in anger may feel satisfying but it may also fluster that driver into making additional mistakes, especially if they're already surprised or embarrassed. Use your horn to warn a driver of a situation they might not see... not as a tool of punishment. Yes, they should be better drivers. But you don't want to be the catalyst to a more dangerous situation developing.
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Apr 11, 2014 01:33
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Hi guys. I noticed this thing on Massdrop. Is it a good camera package for $99? https://www.massdrop.com/buy/genius-dvr-hd500d-dual-channel-dash-camera I drive a 2003 Mazda Protege5, if that matters. e. Here it is on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Genius-DVR-HD-Digital-Recorder-Vehicle/dp/B00GHPBVH8 for $162 Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Sep 12, 2015 |
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Sep 12, 2015 20:47
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Leperflesh posted:Hi guys. There's only an hour left in this drop and it seems like a good deal so I'm gonna just get it. I hope this isn't stupid.
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Sep 14, 2015 05:45
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Have you gone back to the area of that intersection to try and find either an owner, or a momcat with a litter, or possibly an abandoned litter? A kitten that small is only ever on its own if its litter has been disturbed or its owner lost it.
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Sep 14, 2015 17:31
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I've worked a little bit with a cat rescue group. In industrial areas it's typically a momcat who has a litter under a dumpster or in the weeds behind a building or something. You catch the rest by using the one kitten as bait... put them in a carrier or cage, set them near the corner where they were found at a quiet time in the evening or early morning, and back off a ways. Mom or siblings may come around seeking the kitten. I don't expect a random person to go to that kind of trouble, of course. It's good of you just to rescue the one kitten. But it's a thing that can be done successfully, sometimes.
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Sep 14, 2015 17:38
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Kittens don't become "feral" until they're older. Small kittens will socialize and imprint on a human with like 10 minutes of contact. The older they get, the more wary they get, and by the time they're 6 months old, a cat that has not been socialized will be more or less permanently feral - they may warm up to a human, but most won't tolerate being touched and will fight if they're picked up. There are exceptions but they're rare. Looks like these guys operate in metro Atlanta, and this group also does stuff in Georgia so they'll have an Atlanta group. You could give them a call if you like. If you do decide to keep the kitten, take it to a vet soon. It needs testing for disease, and should be treated for fleas, worms, and any other parasites typical to your area.
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Sep 14, 2015 20:02
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Right on. She's quite young and will likely be a wonderful pet.
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Sep 14, 2015 20:12
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8ender posted:One of our cats is an exception. He was about 6-7 months old when I found him nearly dead at a friends condo complex in the winter. I put him in a box and he lived with my motorcycles and cars in a garage for a month while I nursed him back from near death. He was a bit hostile with the other cats so he lived in my office and chilled on my lap each night for an additional 2-3 months. After that he was the fattest, most lovable bear of a cat ever. Possibly an exception, but also very possibly an abandoned cat who was at least somewhat socialized. It's incredibly sad how many pet cats are abandoned by irresponsible (heartless) owners. Most of them don't survive but a few manage it and can become a bit skittish. There are also "ferals" who people see and feed and pet a lot as older kittens. We captured our two boys as brothers being raised by a fully-feral cat when they were both around 10-12 weeks old; they're socialized and good pets, but they'll always be quite skittish and very wary of strangers. Nobody new to our house gets to see them, much less pet them. That's pretty typical.
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Sep 15, 2015 07:22
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You can also just measure how long it took you to pass things in the camera's view with known sizes and calculate speed.
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Sep 17, 2015 20:01
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My Genius DVR-HD500D arrived this week and I need to get it set up. It came with a cigarette lighter adapter, which is pretty inconvenient for me because I have a USB cig light plug thingy that my wife uses for charging her phone when she's driving, and also it'd mean having a cord running along the dash somewhere. So I'd like to just wire the power cord directly to the car. The car is a 2003 Mazda Protege5. There are no haynes/chiltons for this car, but I do have the full Mazda service manual. There is a fuse box and a lot of wiring under the drivers-side dash that is reasonably accessible. There are several empty fuse slots. I think since the camera wants to be plugged into the cig lighter and I think that is only on when the ignition is on, that I should probably wire it into a switched circuit rather than an always-on circuit. Although I also think if it's wired into always-on, that wouldn't hurt too much because it does have a power button, and anyway I probably won't just leave it in the car overnight since it also easily disconnects from the suction cup mount. So, is it safe to just cut the cig lighter adapter off the cord, split out the wiring, and wire it into the fusebox? If so, is there an easy way for me to figure out which wire should go where? I have a soldering iron, heatshrink wrap, additional wire, etc. and a (very very cheap) multimeter, so I think I should be able to do this in theory. Second question: the thing's manual just specifies that it wants a Micro SD (SDHC) memory card, at least class 4, and at least 4GB. It records in MOV format (H.264 compression). The back of the box specifies max 32GB but that's the only place I can find a specified max capacity... it's not in the manual or on Genius's web site. What 32GB card should I get? It records both front and rear cams, front in HD 1280x720/30fps and rear in VGA 640x480/30fps simultaneously, although I don't know yet if I get two files, or if it just writes the picture-in-picture to file like it shows on the screen. I assume I should not just get any old 32GB SDHC card but would something like this work fine? Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Oct 4, 2015 |
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Oct 4, 2015 00:06
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I forgot to say thanks for the help, guys. This weekend turned out to be really busy so I haven't had time with the car to work on getting the cams in place yet, but I think I have a good idea of what to do. Most likely I'll dissect the cigarett lighter plug and wire the innards into the car wiring. There's no cladding above the drivers' feet and lots of exposed (although neatly secured) circuits up in there, so I'm pretty confident I can tap into the cig lighter circuit downstream of the fuse, and then ziptie in place whatever bits of the cam plug need to be secured up in there.
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Oct 6, 2015 17:54
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Don't pass on the right, yo. (Doesn't excuse him, I'm just saying.) I got a memory card for my Genius DVR-HD500D and it's working good. I did a test run or two and the sound quality is terrible, though - it's picking up pulsing or something from the engine so the sound is distorted and choppy. I think it might have to do with where I mounted it - just behind and below the rear view mirror, so it's right up nearly against the glass. It just seems like the mic is really sensitive. Any ideas? Otherwise I'm quite pleased. It records both the front and the rear cameras independently, I can tell it to record in 1m, 3m, or 5m files, the field of view seems to be reasonably wide, and the camera feels reasonably well put-together. For $100 it's not a bad deal.
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Oct 10, 2015 19:32
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Yeah I live in CA and I occasionally pass on the right, but while doing so I'm acutely aware that anyone ahead and to my left may merge right at any time without warning, because assuming nobody is passing you on the right is a normal thing and a lot of people have a blind spot they don't check with an over-shoulder look before doing so. CharlesM posted:I don't know if any dashcam really has good sound quality but it sounds like yours might be picking up alternator whine through the electrical socket. I don't know if there's anything you can do about that. That is actually a distinct possibility. I don't suppose I could wire in some sort of rectifier or something? I'm now wired directly into the circuit that powers the socket. e. Comparing different videos: -There's definitely a thrumming that coincides with engine speed -There's definitely more noise with the engine running than off -The really horrible distortion is when the fan or A/C is running. One more detail: my car shocks people. I get out of the car and instinctively brush the frame with the back of my forearm now, because it will zap me every time. I just got used to it and ignore it but sometimes I have a passenger and they get a surprise when they exit and touch the door or frame. It's not enough to be dangerous, but its enough to cause a surprising zap that can actually sting pretty good for a second if you get it somewhere sensitive, like your fingertips. So maybe there's some grounding issue? It's a 2003 Mazda Protege5, if that matters. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Oct 15, 2015 |
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Oct 15, 2015 18:16
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Yeah I sorta assumed that, but now it's making me wonder if it's not the car gaining a static charge that gets discharged into my body. There doesn't seem to be any variation in the shock based on what I'm wearing or how long I've been driving.
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Oct 15, 2015 21:17
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I'm running Kumho Exsta 4Xes but back when I had the OEM tires (Pirellis I think?) there wasn't any difference.
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Oct 15, 2015 21:26
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8ender posted:My old Protege 5 would introduce alternator noise to pretty much anything plugged into the lighter socket and outputting audio. That alternator itself also sounded like the Jetsons space car and was really annoying. drat. I was hoping this was something minor I could fix, but if it's endemic to the car, I may have more trouble. Maybe I'll ask in the DIY wiring thread about how to clean up the power coming from that circuit.
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Oct 16, 2015 22:02
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spog posted:http://www.crutchfield.com/S-lnHKJgzLVdP/learn/learningcenter/car/noise_suppressors_installation_guide.html Hmm. Some useful hints in here about how I can improve the grounding, which seems like a likely culprit. 8ender posted:Edit: my bad, I meant the ground loop isolators like this: This would help if my stereo was getting noise, but the dashcam is only connected to the car's electrical via two very small (probably 24 gauge) wires on the 12v cigarette lighter circuit. unless I can just cut the RCA jacks off and wire it in inline?
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Oct 17, 2015 23:07
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nm posted:Generally, my advice in cars is to turn off the audio. I don't generally see the utility, but I guess the other party might confess everything. I record audio (although it's not working properly right now) because I can imagine cases where something like the squeal of the brakes of a car that is out of frame, the sound of an approaching siren, or even just someone honking their horn could provide relevant context to an accident. I also want to record interactions with the police, including police instructions broadcast over a loudspeaker. In your not-legally-binding lawyer opinion, if an officer pulls me over, do I have to tell them that I'm recording audio and/or video? If an officer instructs me (or "requests") to turn off a dashcam, do I have to obey?
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Nov 19, 2015 07:54
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Don't actually buy a horn that is so startlingly loud that you'll frighten every driver within 100 yards, wake everyone trying to sleep within a half mile, and basically cause mayhem and accidents and violate noise ordinances etc. Having a loud horn does not actually work as punishment for people who do stupid dangerous things on the road. All you need is to be loud enough to call attention to your car when someone has apparently not noticed it.
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Dec 3, 2015 02:07
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melon cat posted:I'm considering getting this one for my wife's car. But I'd really like to know if there are any half-decent dashcams that record the front and rear views. M Genius DVR-HD500D that I got for $100 off Massdrop does this and it seems fine. Front and rear are simultaneously recorded; you can view either on the cam, or do a picture-in-picture. I'm having trouble with audio with mine, but I'm 99% sure the problem is with my car and not the camera - it records audio fine when my car isn't running, so it's very likely alternator noise in my ground that's causing the issue. For a cheapo dashcam it seems like decent quality of recording.
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Dec 15, 2015 21:55
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Always always always pay for uninsured motorist insurance. It's cheap and can be huge. It covers hit & run as well, typically. Sorry, too late for you in this case of course, but I'm an evangelist for it. Saved my rear end when my golf got totaled in a hit & run.
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Dec 16, 2015 23:35
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smax posted:Oh, I have the coverage. I'm just talking about my $250 deductible for the uninsured/underinsured coverage. drat, you even said that. Sorry, I obviously can't read today.
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Dec 17, 2015 02:25
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My wife got this one tonight. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5udc9smVMA There's no reason to prefer one bore of the tunnel over another. But some people panic and decide they really need to be in a different bore.
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Dec 24, 2015 08:29
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A few years ago my sister and her kids and me and my wife were all flying to Oklahoma City in January for my grandma's 90th birthday. We had a stopover in Dallas/Ft. Worth and they decided to cancel the second leg to OKC due to the risk that there might be snow. (It never actually snowed.) So, needing to get to OKC, I rented a minivan, we packed everyone up, and the guy at the rental car counter gave us directions on a road map. ...which took us on a toll road. Not being from the area I kept expecting a loving toll booth but it was 2 AM and no toll booth materialized. There was literally no way for me to pay for the two tolls, which I think were like 35 cents each? Something tiny. The road signs had a phone number but if you called it you had to sign up in advance to get a transponder or some loving thing like that, there was no option to just use a card to pay a one-time toll. Months later I got a bill from the rental car company for over sixty dollars: two discreet $30 fees for the two separate (I think very small, like a couple bucks) fines for toll violations, for tolls totalling less than a buck. I can totally understand someone panicking if that's the way Texas rolls. Because gently caress that poo poo, the onramp to the toll road should say "TINY TOLL BUT IF YOU DON"T HAVE A TRANSPONDER, DO NOT ENTER OR YOU'LL BE FINED, THERE ARE NO TOLL BOOTHS, YOU CAN'T PAY CASH NOR CAN YOU JUST CALL UP AND PAY A TOLL BY CREDIT CARD, SERIOUSLY DO NOT ENTER"
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Dec 27, 2015 06:48
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Nondescript Van posted:Yeah that's what everybody said. I liked the car well enough but now I seem to care about cars since I had to buy a new one. Did you buy a nondescript van?
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Mar 3, 2016 01:38
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Also you might not think so but you can totally get insurance for your car and make a claim when you crash it even on a race track.
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Jul 26, 2016 08:19
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The truck driver has a responsibility to get up to freeway speed on the ramp. Yes, he also needs to yeild, but it's tough, if some fucker isn't giving you any room at all, your only option is to hit the brakes and immediately create a slow-moving hazard in the right lane as you merge in behind him. Truck driver is at fault for failing to yield. That said, car driver is also at fault, for deliberately creating a hazard. Even when you have the right of way, you have a legal responsibility to do what you can to prevent or avoid an accident. Once the truck driver had failed to yield, the car driver had to move over. Also, in many states it's a legal requirement that you move over for merging traffic, so if he had a view of the truck merging in while it was still on the ramp, and if it was safe to move left (looks like it probably was), he may have been required to do that, depending on the state. Either way, car driver is a dumbass for trying to enforce his right of way at the risk of his life. If there'd been any kind of obstacle on the shoulder, the truck driver might have been forced to sideswipe him more solidly, and if the truck driver simply hadn't seen him at all - which would be neglectful, but it happens - he could have been obliterated. So he's a loving idiot, regardless.
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Jul 31, 2016 22:24
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My Genius DVR-HD500D is still working. It was compatible with a 32gb card, came with front and rear cameras which it continuously records along with audio, and was worth the $100 I paid. The mount is starting to get a little loose. The audio is hosed up, but I'm 95% sure that's due to a problem with my car rather than with the camera itself - there's tons of EM interference and the car's ground is definitely bad (everyone else who has owned a 2001-3 protege 5 has reported the same issue of being shocked every time they get out of the car). Basically you hear a lot of alternator noise on the audio which varies in time with the engine revs. The "night vision" mode is worthless, all it seems to do is turn on four LEDs mounted on the front of the cam. The controls are very useful and good. It has a screen, you can see picture-in-picture or just watch the front or rear cam, you can clearly see when it's recording, and the button to tell it to permanently store the most recent file is easy to mash without looking. Despite the drawbacks, I think a dual-cam system with mounting hardware for $100 that is still working after a year is pretty good.
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Aug 22, 2016 20:14
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Well, other Protege5 owners report the exact same thing, regardless of what we're wearing or how old the car is. So I'm convinced there's a design flaw of some kind. I'll look into replacing the alternator, though, if it's not too expensive.
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Aug 22, 2016 22:55
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https://www.massdrop.com/buy/blacksys-ch100b-2ch-dash-camera BlackSys CH100B 2CH Dash Camera I have no particular opinion about this camera, which is currently on massdrop for about $250, but the features list looks pretty nice. quote:Full HD Video & Motion Detection    quote:Specs
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Aug 27, 2016 17:56
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Raluek posted:Or is this not how it works? I am not a lawyer, but: in pretty much every case, when a layperson attempts to narrowly interpret the letter of the law in their favor in order to get away with something, they wind up gravely disappointed.
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Aug 29, 2016 07:40
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Again I am not a lawyer, but note: The laws in the US about recording without permission relate to recording conversations "in private"; e.g., they apply to things said by you and your passengers inside your car, and potentially to things you say to someone as you discuss them while you're in your car. For example, if someone were to approach your car and have a conversation with you while you were stopped, but they were unaware you were recording what they said. But there is a general assumption that things said and done "in public" have no presumption of privacy - so, you can take photos of people as they walk down a public street, without their explicit consent, and you can publish those photos. Likewise with sound. Those laws have no effect on, say, you recording an accident including audio. Especially if the audio records the sound of their tires screeching as they slam on the brakes just out of frame, or record the sound of a siren as an ambulance approaches an intersection from out of frame, or record the sound of you declaring loudly "poo poo my brakes aren't working oh god the brakes aren't working the brakes aren't working" just before you hit something at near full speed. There are plenty of possibilities where the audio would be helpful (or harmful) to your case, or just to help reconstruct an accident. The sounds that aren't someone having a conversation with you are totally legit to record. And, a court is not (or even the most likely) way your dashcam video might be used. I think the most likely scenario is using your dashcam video to support your case with your own or another party's insurance company. For example, you could present your dashcam video to another party's insurance that is refusing to pay a claim for your damages. Often if another driver is lying about what happened, having video including intact audio could potentially convince the driver's representative that you're the one telling the truth. If you're in a one-party consent state, as long as you're part of the conversation, you should be 100% fine recording audio. If you're in a two-party consent state, I think you should still record audio, but get permission audibly when your passengers are in the vehicle - you don't need them to sign a form if you just tell them "hey my dashcam is recording audio, is that OK?" and record that. Obviously if they say no, then you have to mute. So the only area where I think you're possibly in trouble is if you're in a two-party consent state and you're recording audio and then you unexpectedly have a conversation with someone without the opportunity to inform them that you're recording. Say, a road rage incident? But I bet if they're screaming obscenities at you and pummeling your car with a tire iron, their behavior is sufficiently public that it doesn't qualify as a "private conversation" and you'd be OK. Regardless, I'd rather run the very remote risk of being sued for nonconsentual conversation-recording, then just always have my audio recording turned off, and have it miss some important noises during an incident.
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Aug 29, 2016 18:21
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The Locator posted:You need to immediately call the PD and wait on the scene for a report in a hit & run, even if it's just so your insurance doesn't decide it's your fault. Just to address this. One more data point. In CA, if nobody was injured and damage is less than $750, you don't have to even file a police report. For any accident, you can file a police report up to 72 hours after the incident. It was a stop & go bumper bender hit & run my wife was involved in that got me motivated to finally buy my dashcam. She pulled over but the other driver didn't. It would have been on cam. We filed a police report two days later, and our insurance paid out, minus deductible, for the repair.
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Sep 24, 2016 01:42
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And yet people get pulled over for speeding, so this argument makes no sense. It's not a high speed pursuit to flash your lights and attempt to pull over someone who just committed a traffic violation right in front of you. If they speed off instead of pulling over? Great, you just nailed them, on your police cruiser camera, for a much bigger crime.
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Sep 24, 2016 02:23
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It occurred to me just now that the officer on the scene might choose to use the radio to get someone else to intercept the suspect, in order to be able to stay on scene in case immediate first aid is needed by a victim. You might outrun a cop but you can't outrun a radio.
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Sep 25, 2016 00:42
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Do various dashcams all join to their mounts using a standardized interface, or are they all different? Asking because the mount for my Genius is falling apart and I need a new one (along with a new battery but that's a different issue).
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Feb 14, 2017 18:39
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Around here (bay area) not one of those short clips showed anything I don't see so frequently as to consider it totally unremarkable 
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Mar 8, 2017 22:16
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That seems like one of those cases where the "right turn only" sign is a band-aid on the real problem, which is an intersection designed to encourage people to break the rule.
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Mar 16, 2017 19:31
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Yeah I'm not suggesting people should break the rules just because it's possible to do so. But good intersection design naturally pipes cars into the directions they're supposed to go, rather than presenting a big obvious seemingly-safe-ish option and then prohibiting that option with a sign. You could for example place something called a "channelizing island" on the approaching leg of the road we see center-top in most of the video to funnel drivers into their (legally only) option of turning right: http://www.ladpw.org/traffic/ntmp/tools_forced-turn-islands.cfm
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Mar 17, 2017 00:18
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