Anyone who has spent enough time on the road—especially in Metro Manila—has probably at least encountered a minor fender bender or two. It is almost unavoidable. If not an accident, maybe you have been apprehended for a road violation once or twice. Because human behavior is both uncontrollable and unpredictable, the causes and outcome of each incident vary.
Proving who is at fault as a result of an accident becomes difficult unless one has hard evidence and witnesses. Then you are forced to face the challenging and time-consuming police and insurance company processes unless there is hard evidence that can document your side of the story. Road mishaps and run-ins with the traffic enforcers can be a battle of “he says-she says.”
Recently, a proposal to make dash-cam installation mandatory began trending on social media and has become a pertinent topic of discussion. While the premise behind the proposal is to ease traffic flow in Metro Manila, especially during accidents, where vehicles involved could be cleared faster, there might even be better reasons for pushing this proposal.
Dashboard cameras—commonly referred to as ‘dash cams’—are small cameras mounted on a vehicle’s dashboard or front window that continuously record the scene ahead. Dash cams can range from the simple camera and recorder setup to the more elaborate that include rear and side views, GPS tracking, speedometer, infrared and low-light viewing, high-definition cameras and an event data recorder. This is sort of like an airplane’s black box that can record events prior to and after an accident. Originally used by law enforcement in the United States to record car chases for evidence, dash cams have become widely available in the market, and car owners have used them to document traffic accidents and, in some cases, incidents of corruption and brutality among traffic enforcers and the police. A quick search on Google and YouTube will show thousands of videos uploaded by users showing various incidents and have become useful in documenting incidents for insurance claims and legal proceedings.
Currently, Russia is the largest user of dash cams, where almost every vehicle is equipped with a dash cam. With a road fatality rate of 27,025 per year in 2013 and widespread police corruption and insurance fraud, the Russian Interior Ministry passed regulations in 2009 that removed legal hurdles for car owners in installing dash cams. The proliferation of dash cams in Russia have spawned videos spread all over the Internet, where disturbing incidents of traffic accidents, fist fights between erring motorists, and corrupt police officers asking for bribes. Entire web sites and social-media pages dedicated to such events have been set up where viewers can watch uncut versions of Russian dash-cam recordings.
Anytime the government proposes something like this that is “mandatory,” red flags should be raised. But the idea of requiring dash cams could actually serve and be for the public good. A proposal to require public-utility vehicles, including jeepneys, taxis and busses, sounds good but seems discriminatory. We should explore this idea of mandatory dash cams for every road vehicle. It might be a wise idea.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano