Why The UK Needs To Embrace Dash-Cams Right Now

Three big problems we’re all living through right now: money is tight, the general standard of driving on UK roads is poor, and the whole country needs cheering up. One solution: the simple application of dash-cams to our cars.

Car Throttle has been bringing you news of telematics (in-car black boxes that monitor your driving to reduce insurance costs) since the idea first seriously popped up a year ago. Dash-cams can solve the problems of black boxes – they prove why you might have had to swerve erratically, or put your foot down in exceptional circumstances. It’s all there on screen.

Dash-cams could make a huge difference to the fortunes of young drivers everywhere. Sure, there’d be a few early idiots who’d get themselves banned within half an hour, trying to record the best roundabout drift possible. The rest of us could really benefit though. Imagine dash-cams streaming every journey to a cloud storage system. If nothing crazy goes down, the data is deleted after 28 days. If you need to make a claim, prove your innocence, or even prove to the council one of their massive potholes buckled your rims, you can call upon your insurer to download the relevant footage, and pass it on. And as a happy side-effect, stone-wall proofing you’re a decent driver would bring insurance costs crashing down.

Worried about the invasion of privacy, of even more ‘Big Brother’ culture? Get over it. You’re caught on CCTV every day more times than you go to the toilet. Every time you get in a car, there are speed cameras, bus lane cameras, parking lot cameras... you’re being watched already. Just like Vodafone knows who you’ve been texting, and your internet provider has enough dirt on you to write a biography. If your every move is documented, you may as well use that to your advantage behind the wheel, saving a few quid and ending those unfair insurance form arguments.

So, that’s solved the UK’s driving standards overnight, and put money back into the pockets of young, careful drivers who deserve a decent set of wheels. How to cheer mid-recession, crap-at-football GB up? By publishing the worst pieces of driving on YouTube for us all to have a good laugh at – just like the Russians do.

For every lorry-crashing, windscreen-kicking, pedestrian-dodging moment of hilarity caught on Russian cam, there are thousands of hours of nowt. Only the highlights get published for the world to gawp at – that’s what we need over here. Enough with BBC3 documentaries semi-glorifying Britain’s most dangerous drivers. Stick the worst driving clips up online and YouTube, Facebook and Twitter commenters will recognise the morons responsible in no time. Perhaps the money from video hits could be recycled by the Highways Agency into improving roads, or shared with insurers to encourage uptake.

It’s just an idea. Until CT comes to power and is rebranded as the Department of Transport, it’ll probably remain just a bright idea. But with clips like these, tell me you’re not curious to see what Britain’s drivers are really like, from the unwavering eye of the humble dash-cam...