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Dash cams are still somewhat rare in the United States despite their wild popularity in other nations. They are almost ubiquitous in Russia and parts of Asia, where the unblinking electronic eyes help to deter scams and police corruption, as well as capturing the occasional meteor explosion or plane crash.
Thankfully, we live in a country where the police and judicial systems are (for the most part) trusted to be fair and impartial. Partly for this reason, dash cams in the U.S. have been slow to gain widespread use beyond the police and commercial drivers.
But with the global market for dash cams projected to be worth more than $4 billion annually by 2020, a growing number of companies are hoping to make them as common in American cars as Bluetooth and satellite navigation. I recently had the opportunity to review a new dash cam from Garmin and spent a couple of months religiously turning the camera on when I drove the kiddos to school and daycare. The Garmin is a nice, simple device that appeared to perform its duty well?except for periodically launching itself off the windshield thanks to the quixotic nature of the suction mount.
I came away from my experience deeply conflicted on the value of dash cams. I did come to feel a certain sense of assurance from having a dash cam, knowing I could whip out my footage after an accident to demonstrate the utter incompetence of the fool who just hit me. But after the novelty ...