Vehicular videography is viral, and it’s not hard to see why

It is argued the world’s oldest dashcam video is a scene from the 1927 silent film A Ride with Chief Kenlon. The 11-minute motion picture shows a New York Fire Department crew leaving their station to extinguish several blazes around the Big Apple that year.

For two-and-a-half minutes, viewers get a driver’s perspective as the truck maneuvers its way around Ford Model Ts, horsedrawn carriages, trolleys, snowbanks and hordes of pedestrians.

While it’s fascinating to view the nation’s largest city a century ago, it’s a far cry from the dashboard camera footage popular on YouTube today. Car crashes, road ragers, driver fails and high-speed chases dominate the web.

The most-viewed YouTube video of dashcam footage is of a storm chaser following a tornado near Laramie, Wyo. In four years, the video garnered more than 65 million views and half a million likes.

YouTube searches for “dashcam” have steadily risen over the years, peaking in 2017. Over the past year, Arizona was among the top 10 states to search for dashcam videos.

The top two dashcam videos shot in Arizona depict what’s speculated to be a ghost standing on State Route 87 and a distracted truck driver crashing on Interstate 8 near Yuma. The videos have pulled nearly 5 million views combined.

But capturing spooky spectacles and can’t-look-away crashes aren’t the only popular things about dashcams.

‘The video never lies’

The global dashboard camera market as of last year was estimated to be worth north of $4 billion and is expected to reach $7.6 billion by 2030, according to data from Grand View Research in San Francisco. That’s a 9.6% annual growth rate over seven years.

In the U.S., that growth is a smidgen slower at 7.3% annually over the same seven-year period. Most of that growth is acquiring footage for insurance claims, according to the data.

Insurance claims and documenting crashes for lawsuits are two of the main reasons Phoenix-based attorney Jason Hutzler of Hutzler Law said he recommends dashcams.

“They’re super helpful in an accident situation because it documents the accident almost entirely,” he told InMaricopa. “They’re useful in the sense they can overturn other people’s version of events that happen at accident scenes because the video never lies.”

Aaron Keel, owner of Maricopa Dashcam and a Homestead resident, said previous careers opened his eyes and cemented his belief in their usefulness.

“I saw a lot of carnage as an EMT,” he said. “But working at a personal injury law firm after coming from the medical field, that’s what really got me to see how dashcams are helpful for insurance claims. That’s when I got my first dashcam.”

He said his customers cite the same reasons.

“A lot of customers are telling me that they’re just seeing so much craziness on the roads,” he said. “They’re either seeing close calls or have been in accidents before. I think people are starting to realize it’s not just a necessity for safety, but also proof for what happened in an accident.”

The next ‘standard’ car part?

Proof is exactly what Hutzler says he looks for as a personal injury attorney. Each vehicular accident case begins with a check for dashcam footage.

“If they have a dashcam, it’s one of the first things we go through to assess the case better. If they don’t have one, we tell them to get one,” he said.

He said the camera footage usually provides quick, indisputable evidence that will keep a case out of court.

In one example, a client of his was able to win an injury case after his car was rear-ended by another driver because of his dashcam.

“The woman who rear-ended him called the police,” Hutzler said. “When they showed up, she said he backed into her. My client said, ‘I got a dashcam and you can watch it.’”

The footage showed the man’s car sitting idle until the camera suddenly jolted forward.

“In that instance, he was able to successfully convince the cop he was not at fault for the accident,” he said. “We were able to move on and present a claim against the person who hit him.”

20 times more common, lawyer says

The footage is so useful, in fact, Hutzler has offered dashcams as a promotional item.

“That’s how important I think they are for people, I was giving them away,” he said. “I wish there were more of them, to be honest.”

The popularity of installing and using dashcams isn’t predicted to wane anytime soon. Hutzler recalled less than a decade ago, it was rare to take on clients who had dashcams in their cars.

And now?

“Today, it’s super common. The number of clients with a dashcam went from about 1 of every 100 clients to now where it seems like 1 out of 5 have one,” he said. This is evident in the many traffic rant group on Facebook, where dashcam clips of so-called “low IQ” drivers are a near daily occurrence among some 10,000 members.

Most dashcams sold today are inexpensive, yet still manage to deliver high-quality video. One brand Keel recommends sells models that range in price from $110 to $230, although his top recommendation runs $140 at retail pricing.

Ultimately, Hutzler said, the rule of thumb is any dashcam is better than no dashcam.
“It’s more important to get one put in than it is to worry about the quality of it,” he said.
Keel agreed.

“I run a business, but I’m also just here for the community,” Keel said. “I really feel that in the long term, we can make the community safer if a lot of us had dash cams and we knew our driving habits.”