johny5_uk
Active Member
These cameras seem to be more mainstream now and a recent "incident" I had the other month pushed me into getting one.
As I approached some lights, the road branches out to two lanes although only enough room for 2 vehicles in the right hand lane.
The lights were on red but as there were 3 cars already queing on the left I thought I would pull up in the empty right lane.
When you go through the lights the road branches to the left and continues to be two lanes for maybe 4 cars lengths, so when you have gone through the lights you need to merge (in turn), normally traffic from the left merges to the right due to parked cars.
So as I was approaching the lights, they were red and then changed so instead of me stopping, I continued through whilst at the same time looking to my left, being courteous and letting the first car that had qued pull in front of me.
There was a volvo estate behind him and he pulled behind me.
At no point did I accelerate hard, in fact I was so casual and slow I was going to let all 3 of the cars (volvo was the 2nd in line) undertake me but mr Volvo left plenty of space and I just thought he was pulling in behind me anyway......that was until he let out a barrage of horn blasts behind me!
I wondered why he did this and looked in the mirror, he was a fairly large jamaican chap throwing his arms around in the air as if maybe I had cut him up!? I certainly hadnt.
As it was two lanes and no one was in the outside lane I made the mistake of pointing out to him that there were in fact TWO lanes by lifting my hand up and showing him two fingers.
At this point I guess some of you are thinking I was "flicking the V's" but seriously, as funny as it sounds I wasnt. The hand gestures was confirming the number "2" as oppose to lowering and raising my 2 fingers. (Oh my the more I write this the more I can see now why he took offence! but seriously I was gesturing "2" and he was actually straddling the second lane now I remember).
A couple of seconds later I hear an engine ROAR (wait, it cant have been? it was a volvo estate after all?), I look again in the mirror and he is overtaking me like a mad man possessed in a built up 30 limit on the opposite side of the road.
I wasnt going to stop him, if he wanted to be in front so bad then be my guest.
Only when he got in front of me, he SLAMMED his anchors on and came to a standstill, very very quickly. Needless to say I slammed my brakes on, not done one of those emergency stops for a long long time!
I was gobsmacked. Wondering what he was going to do next, I see him jump out of the car and start thundering towards me! Oh my he is big, only more fat than muscle I wasnt really bothered about any confrontation after all I didn't do anything wrong. My only worry was he was going to thump or kick my beautiful Mercedes so I quickly pressed the electric window just in case he wanted his fist to have quick access to my face.
He was screaming at me, what a loon but the next thing he did was priceless. He produced a police badge and held his wallet out screaming at me to "slow down"!???? and did I want "uniform" down here!?
I agreed and said I think I do want them down here actually!!
His female accomplice joined in by jumping out the passenger side and flashing her nice silver badge at me just chanting the same rubbish.
It all died down after about 5 minutes and when he got back in his car he screamed away down a side street just as I was thinking about taking his registration and reporting him.
I doubt anything would have happened, the experience shook me a little mainly due to the idiotic move he pulled on me.
I think extremely highly of the police and the roles they have to do, I thought scum like this didnt exist much anymore and was surprised to see it first hand of them flaunting what power they think they had over me when I hadnt done anything wrong at all.
In hindsight I wished I had one of those black box recorders so I could have got the reg and sent the video to their CSI.
I did a bit of reading and purchased one from these guys, I got the 16gb version for £189 with morning delivery.
Blackvue 380G HD Black box digital incident recorder
installation was so simple, it just plugs straight into the cigarette lighter socket and you can tuck the wires in the trim around the edge of the windscreen.
I opted for a bit more of a stealth install that looked more OEM to the car as I didnt want it sticking out or seeing that it was stuck to the inside of the windscreen so I removed the trim from behind the rear view mirror that covers the electronics on the windscreen.
I bolted it to the trim and it sits tucked nicely behind the rear view mirror. The only thing it might affect was the auto dimming sensor on the rear view mirror but I tested this in different locations and it was fine.
You cant see the device from the driver or passenger seats unless you lean right forward and looking at the windscreen from outside the car you are hard pushed to notice the lense sat right in front of the rear view mirror.
I have routed the wire to the glove box and thats where it gets it power from but I have ordered another box for £22 that enables it to be powered on all the time as it also has a "parking" mode to sense people walking around your car and also if you car gets knocked in which case it starts recording.
Also going to get a 32gb micro ssd as these are cheap and will give me over 17hrs of recording and the 16gb allows 8hrs 41mins.
I have also disabled the sound and speed indication from the video (720p HD at 30frames sec, the unit recording GPS location, maps your journey and also displays speed and G's.
Recording from youtube:
[youtube]g3A87cvZ8zg[/youtube]
My install:
As I approached some lights, the road branches out to two lanes although only enough room for 2 vehicles in the right hand lane.
The lights were on red but as there were 3 cars already queing on the left I thought I would pull up in the empty right lane.
When you go through the lights the road branches to the left and continues to be two lanes for maybe 4 cars lengths, so when you have gone through the lights you need to merge (in turn), normally traffic from the left merges to the right due to parked cars.
So as I was approaching the lights, they were red and then changed so instead of me stopping, I continued through whilst at the same time looking to my left, being courteous and letting the first car that had qued pull in front of me.
There was a volvo estate behind him and he pulled behind me.
At no point did I accelerate hard, in fact I was so casual and slow I was going to let all 3 of the cars (volvo was the 2nd in line) undertake me but mr Volvo left plenty of space and I just thought he was pulling in behind me anyway......that was until he let out a barrage of horn blasts behind me!
I wondered why he did this and looked in the mirror, he was a fairly large jamaican chap throwing his arms around in the air as if maybe I had cut him up!? I certainly hadnt.
As it was two lanes and no one was in the outside lane I made the mistake of pointing out to him that there were in fact TWO lanes by lifting my hand up and showing him two fingers.
At this point I guess some of you are thinking I was "flicking the V's" but seriously, as funny as it sounds I wasnt. The hand gestures was confirming the number "2" as oppose to lowering and raising my 2 fingers. (Oh my the more I write this the more I can see now why he took offence! but seriously I was gesturing "2" and he was actually straddling the second lane now I remember).
A couple of seconds later I hear an engine ROAR (wait, it cant have been? it was a volvo estate after all?), I look again in the mirror and he is overtaking me like a mad man possessed in a built up 30 limit on the opposite side of the road.
I wasnt going to stop him, if he wanted to be in front so bad then be my guest.
Only when he got in front of me, he SLAMMED his anchors on and came to a standstill, very very quickly. Needless to say I slammed my brakes on, not done one of those emergency stops for a long long time!
I was gobsmacked. Wondering what he was going to do next, I see him jump out of the car and start thundering towards me! Oh my he is big, only more fat than muscle I wasnt really bothered about any confrontation after all I didn't do anything wrong. My only worry was he was going to thump or kick my beautiful Mercedes so I quickly pressed the electric window just in case he wanted his fist to have quick access to my face.
He was screaming at me, what a loon but the next thing he did was priceless. He produced a police badge and held his wallet out screaming at me to "slow down"!???? and did I want "uniform" down here!?
I agreed and said I think I do want them down here actually!!
His female accomplice joined in by jumping out the passenger side and flashing her nice silver badge at me just chanting the same rubbish.
It all died down after about 5 minutes and when he got back in his car he screamed away down a side street just as I was thinking about taking his registration and reporting him.
I doubt anything would have happened, the experience shook me a little mainly due to the idiotic move he pulled on me.
I think extremely highly of the police and the roles they have to do, I thought scum like this didnt exist much anymore and was surprised to see it first hand of them flaunting what power they think they had over me when I hadnt done anything wrong at all.
In hindsight I wished I had one of those black box recorders so I could have got the reg and sent the video to their CSI.
I did a bit of reading and purchased one from these guys, I got the 16gb version for £189 with morning delivery.
Blackvue 380G HD Black box digital incident recorder
installation was so simple, it just plugs straight into the cigarette lighter socket and you can tuck the wires in the trim around the edge of the windscreen.
I opted for a bit more of a stealth install that looked more OEM to the car as I didnt want it sticking out or seeing that it was stuck to the inside of the windscreen so I removed the trim from behind the rear view mirror that covers the electronics on the windscreen.
I bolted it to the trim and it sits tucked nicely behind the rear view mirror. The only thing it might affect was the auto dimming sensor on the rear view mirror but I tested this in different locations and it was fine.
You cant see the device from the driver or passenger seats unless you lean right forward and looking at the windscreen from outside the car you are hard pushed to notice the lense sat right in front of the rear view mirror.
I have routed the wire to the glove box and thats where it gets it power from but I have ordered another box for £22 that enables it to be powered on all the time as it also has a "parking" mode to sense people walking around your car and also if you car gets knocked in which case it starts recording.
Also going to get a 32gb micro ssd as these are cheap and will give me over 17hrs of recording and the 16gb allows 8hrs 41mins.
I have also disabled the sound and speed indication from the video (720p HD at 30frames sec, the unit recording GPS location, maps your journey and also displays speed and G's.
Recording from youtube:
[youtube]g3A87cvZ8zg[/youtube]
My install: