Dashcams and forensics discussed at LRSC meeting

LRSC meeting 10 January

Image: Ian Marsh (L) and Bryn Booker (R) with LRSC chair Councillor Wendy Brice-Thompson

More than 50 members attended the London Road Safety Council meeting on 10 January to hear from two speakers, each bringing their own perspective to the issue of road safety.

Bryn Booker of Nextbase UK, who have an 82% share of the UK dashcams market, talked about the phenomenon of a true ‘independent witness’.  

He told attendees that dashcam footage is now accepted as evidence of collisions by the top 41 UK insurers, and has also become a useful tool in eradicating instances of ‘crash for cash’ and fraudulent whiplash claims.

With their unique broad ‘fish eye’ lenses, dashcams can film front and rear, and store film data in three-minute chapters on SD cards; once the card is full it records over old footage, unless an impact forces the relevant chapter to be locked away.

Some of the advanced models also record GPS locations and there is a model suitable for use by motorcyclists.

Nextbase UK is working on a secure police video portal which will be launched in February to allow members of the public to send video data to the police for action, via the Egress data transfer system.

Ian Marsh from the City of London Police, previously of Hertfordshire Police traffic team, spoke of his experience gathering forensic evidence from the scenes of serious and fatal collisions.  

In an overview of this work he spoke about the evidence collected via mechanical examinations of crashed vehicles, on board diagnostics, mobile phone analysis, sat navs, dash cams and black boxes. He also explained that evidence from nearby CCTV cameras can be useful.

Ian explained that, on occasions, investigating teams keep a road closed for as long as it takes in order to maximise their one chance of establishing a clear picture of what occurred to result in the collision.

The LRSC members who attended were very grateful to both speakers for their insights.

The photo shows both speakers with Cllr Wendy Brice-Thompson, LRSC chair.


16 January 2018

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