Postimees · Cars & Technology (Auto ja tehnika) · 2025
Dashcams: a trendy gadget or a genuinely useful technological invention?
English translation of the original Estonian article. Original headline: Sõiduki pardakaamera: moodne vidin või tõesti kasulik tehnoloogiline leiutis?
See the original design in the magazineVehicle dashcams are becoming ever more popular and have by now become a serious safety device. Recordings are often the best way to identify those who cause dangerous traffic situations and to prove your innocence in accidents or disputed situations.
Although recordings may be used as evidence by both insurers and the police, before sharing them on social media you also have to remember the privacy of other road users.
Why is it useful to have a dashcam, and what should a car owner know when buying one?
We discuss this with Roger Kumm, head of the Prevention and Misdemeanour Procedure Bureau of the Police and Border Guard Board (PPA), and Argo Suislepp, product manager at Klick Eesti AS, which sells the technology.
For the police, these devices play an important role in daily work. Roger Kumm says that recordings from all kinds of cameras have indeed made investigating cases easier and faster. Police officers are very experienced specialists in establishing the circumstances through observation and questioning, but video still says more than 1,000 words. Dashcam recordings are often important evidence.
"In situations where the accounts of witnesses to a traffic accident seem contradictory, we have also turned to fellow road users, for example via social media, asking them to send dashcam videos. Quite a few cases have been resolved this way," says Kumm of the PPA, grateful for road users' contribution to achieving a fair outcome.
According to the police, road users send them videos of various violations or of other drivers' risky behaviour on their own initiative almost every day. On the basis of the dashcam recordings received, proceedings can be and have been initiated, or warnings issued.
Thanks to the cameras' parking mode, they can help record vandals or collisions in car parks. Almost all cameras have a parking mode, but its functionality differs between models. At night, for most products some external lighting is important, or you should choose a camera with a so-called IR light source, advises Suislepp, product manager at Klick Eesti.
Among other things, dashcam recordings help with prevention work in traffic.
The benefits of dashcams reach much further than just establishing the circumstances of traffic accidents. For example, thefts from vehicles parked alongside or in front, road rage incidents, missing persons and more have been caught on video.
Cameras in police vehicles have recorded various law enforcement situations, including arrests of suspects, as well as situations where the police have saved a person's life. In addition, the recordings help assess and improve police work.
The PPA procures cameras for its vehicles together with the car. The national organisation has set out the general technical requirements for dashcams in its procurements. Since the requirements have not been very specific and manufacturers cannot be chosen in procurements, car dealers have relatively free rein to add whichever dashcams they see fit. That is why the range of camera manufacturers and models in PPA vehicles is quite varied.
Which camera should you choose?
The choice of dashcams is wide, offering solutions for every budget and need. Basically, devices fall into three groups: single-camera (at the front), dual-camera (front and rear) and three-camera (front, rear and interior). The last is important, for example, for taxi drivers.
Besides the number of cameras, there are many technical details and functions to choose from that affect both recording quality and ease of use – for example resolution, viewing angle, night-vision quality and other extras such as GPS, parking mode and so on.
Argo Suislepp, product manager at Klick Eesti, explains: "The most important thing is the camera's resolution, for which FullHD is considered the minimum today, while UHD is recommended. The viewing angle is also important – we generally recommend at least 170 degrees." Most cameras record to a memory card or to the camera's own internal memory.
Looking at which general specifications sell best, sales statistics show the triumph of cheaper models: mostly FullHD resolution and small cameras equipped with GPS.
According to Klick Eesti, the direction of development for dashcams in the coming years will probably be automatic event detection with the help of artificial intelligence. The camera can distinguish traffic accidents, sudden braking, dangerous overtaking and so on, saving them separately at once. Analysing driver behaviour and warning the driver of fatigue, distraction or other dangerous situations is also becoming ever more important.
In conclusion, a dashcam in today's traffic is much more than a technological gadget – it is a kind of insurance policy on the windscreen. Recordings can be highly valuable evidence, contributing to a safer traffic culture.