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Dashcams Are The Cheapest Form Of Insurance You can Buy: Here’s Why

Insurance is one of those really finicky things about driving. You select your coverage, select your deductible, find the right company that wants to take on your business, and pay monthly to have that insurance coverage. However, should the unfortunate thing happen and a crash occurs, unless there is overwhelming evidence against the other driver, it can be extremely difficult for an adjuster to rule you at no fault if it truly was no fault of your own.

While having witnesses is often the factor that helps determine fault in a crash seen by many people, what protection do you have if it’s a one on one hit in the middle of the night with no one else around? At that point, it’s your word against their word. And unless you are able to sell ice to someone living in the Arctic, you will still most likely cop some of the fault.

What Are Dashcams & How Do They Work?

Due to a surprising and unpleasant rise in insurance fraud, around the turn of the century, many small companies in Taiwan popped up, selling relatively inexpensive, windshield mountable video cameras that would record the past 30 or 60 minutes of powered on time on a continuous loop to a small memory card. The image was fairly poor, the sound abysmal, but what it did provide was an objective record of the moments leading up to a crash.

Today, there are several major players in the Dashcam market, from Garmin to MiVue, from Abee to BlackVue. For motorcycle riders, there are Sena Camera Communication devices and multiple options of using action cameras like GoPro in special helmet mounts.

Yet, the absolute basic workings of the camera are the same. Either battery or 12V adapter powered, the camera records everything in its field of view onto a memory card that is inserted into the camera. The most common size is 64 GB, but many can now take up to 256 GB cards and have 4K recording options.

Many of these dashcams also have other sensors such as GPS, accelerometers, automatic light correction for the recording, and stabilization features, just to name a few. This data can also be captured into the recording, providing GPS accurate speed, location, g-forces endured, and even snapshot a crash into its own specific file that is easy to find.

How Do Dashcams Protect You?

Schultz & Myers, a law firm specializing in accidents, told us that having photographic evidence of a crash is great, while having video evidence is the best possible scenario. Why is that?

A continuous loop video, properly set up and with a good field of view, is, of all things, objective. The most common thing after experiencing an accident is that your adrenaline spikes, the fight-or-flight response kicks in, and you might miss a crucial detail in your written statement to the police or while filing your claim with your insurance.

A dashcam, on the other hand, has no emotions. It has no adrenaline, no fight-or-flight response. It is simply a video camera that is designed specifically to record inside a car or truck. It can’t be taunted, cajoled, paid off, or threatened. It simply provides the truth, in 1080p HD resolution or better.

Another feature of many dashcams in 2021 are that they can be either tied into your car’s electronics, automatically starting to record when you turn on your car, or plugged in manually to a 12V adapter. The ones that are tied into the car’s electronics have a feature that is called either Parking Mode or Sentry Mode. What this means is that the camera will still record, even with the car turned off, on a low power or super-low power mode recording only one frame per second.

If the accelerometers sense the car has moved, or on some of the very high end units if the microphone detects certain sounds, it will automatically capture the preceding 30 seconds and the following 60 seconds, giving you a 90 second window of what happened. This evidence can be extremely useful in vandalism cases such as willful destruction or damage to property, as shown in many successful claims by Tesla owners using the built in sentry cameras showing people keying the car, or ripping the door handle off.

Are Dashcams Legal?

The exact lettering of the law for the United States, all named roadways are, by definition, public property. This allows for video recording to take place under the first amendment of the US constitution, including video recording of law enforcement on said public property. In terms of the audio recording capabilities of dashcams, you are protected in most states by stating before anything is said between parties that you are recording them on both video and audio. This protection is through the one-party-consent rule, as you are consenting to recording yourself.

The trickier legality of dashcams in the US comes down to some states banning windshield mounting, while other states allow it, and quite a few are okay with it if it is within a prescribed area of the windshield and does not obstruct the driver’s view at all. For this reason, it is very common for dashcams to be mounted up behind the rearview mirror.

In states that ban windshield mounts, namely WA, OR, ID, MT, WY, ND, SD, IA, WI, KS, OK, TX, NM, AR, LA, AL, GA, SC, KY, WV, VA, PA, NJ, and CT, a dash camera can still be mounted on the actual dash of the car, as long as it does not obstruct the view of the driver. DC has a specific rule that allows dashcam’s as long as it is defensibly a “hands free device” while the vehicle is in motion.

As such, dashcams are fully legal in all states and in Canada, as long as the mounting location of that camera abides by your state’s or province’s mounting regulations.

March 24, 2021 / Comments Off

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Is it Time to Steam Clean Your Car?

We all know the excitement and freedom that owning a car can bring to the average American. It allows one to travel between cities, commute to work, visit friends and family, and generally move the nation. When you own a car, you have a degree of freedom that even a century ago would have shocked the average citizen, even if you told it to their faces with your car behind you.Part and parcel of owning a car, however, is maintaining it. How often have we, those that love the automotive part of life, hopped in a friends car and it has garbage on the floor, the seats smell funny, or there is a big crack across the windshield? It’s one of those things that while you don’t comment on it, it still sits in your mind as “I keep my car clean, why can’t my friend?”

One of the ways that you can get rid of that funny seat smell and get the remains of garbage out of the car is via steam cleaning. And we can already hear you asking…

What Is Steam Cleaning?

clean steaming interior car seats — Photo Credit: Oh So Spotless

There are two major types of steam cleaning, interior and exterior, but they both rely on the same basic principle. Water is heated beyond the boiling point in a pressure-safe container, directed through tight piping to a nozzle, and allowed to rapidly expand as pressurized hot water vapor. There are also many different sizes of steam cleaners, from tiny upholstery cleaners that use only a cup of water, to major industrial steam cleaners that can boil tens of gallons of water per hour.

What Is It Good At Removing?

steam cleaner and coffee spill on carpet — Photo Credit: Fortador USA

Honestly, quite a lot. Here’s what we commonly see in car interiors:

Coffee stains
Spills
Dirt
Dried gunk from food items

Not to mention, the stuff off the bottom of your shoe that gets ground into the floor mats every time you drive, even gum that’s been mashed into the seats or carpet, although that takes patience and it helps to have a putty scraper on hand.

On the exterior of your car, it can loosen tough dirt, things that got stuck to your car unintentionally, even the unpleasant after-effects of a bird’s lunch. Simply steam the area to loosen the contamination, and then after a moderate cooling period of about 30 seconds, spray that area with water or wipe as you steam with a lintless microfiber cloth, and watch the stubborn dirt and bird deposits disappear.

In fact, the list of what steam cannot remove is easier to list than what it can remove, and those items are mostly extremely hazardous, moisture and heat sensitive chemicals that you would find in industrial settings only.

Steam cleaning is also excellent as it cleans away the unseens. What is meant by this is that steam cleaning, through the nature of the heat and the pressure, will kill most mites, molds, fungus, and dangerous bacterias such as staphylococcus aureus (which causes Staph infections). It also does not necessarily need to be vacuumed up afterwards, as the pressurized steam expands so quickly that it disperses just as quickly into the ambient air.

Is It Safe For The Car?

In short: yes.

In detail, as long as you don’t leave the nozzle spewing steam at interior plastics, no damage will occur to your car at all. On older, vintage vehicles, with exterior steaming you will often want to keep the nozzle moving, as the paint used before the 1990s often had a much softer paint protecting clear coat applied, which is why on a badly maintained classic, you’ll often see clear coat peeling or even complete paint fade.

Upholstery and fabric carpeting will not be damaged by steam cleaning, and are in fact the most common type of interior materials steam cleaners are used on.

Leather, alcantara, and exotic material interiors, such as those found in supercars and hypercars, however, require a bit more care. You can buy at-home steam cleaners for your car, or you can use a professional service. Steam cleaners are excellent in that they do not produce enough moisture to damage leather or suede, and are often beneficial at rehydrating dried areas of leather. Much like interior plastics, however, you often don’t want to leave the nozzle spewing steam on leather as it is, by nature of what it is, originally organic and it can burn and harden if heated too much.

Alcantara is commonly found in supercars and hypercars, and is extremely sensitive to moisture. Thankfully, most professional steam cleaning services use low-moisture steam cleaners, and there are even special at-home models you can buy that have low-moisture options outlined in their manuals.

How Much Does Steam Cleaning Cost?

Steam cleaning car interior — Photo Credit: Auto Success

For “normal” cars, steam cleaning can cost anywhere from a dollar or two at the local car wash with self-serve cleaners, all the way up to being included in an executive full clean of your car that costs several hundreds of dollars. On the average, if you get just a steam clean of your interior as a direct (and only) service for your car performed by a professional, expect to pay between $75 to $100 and for it to take about an hour.

If part of a full detailing package for an exotic, steam cleaning is often part of the package cost you pay. Some exotic-only cleaning and detailing companies can also have specific services ordered a la carte, from steam cleaning through to paint restoration. As such, these packages and costs can vary wildly, but it is often a safe bet that no matter the package or single service, you will be paying over $1,000 as these are extremely specialized professional workers that make your exotic look better than factory new.

If you’re a detail geek, check out these other articles on car maintenance and cleaning:

January 31, 2021 / Comments Off

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Best 34 Car Gadgets

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The accessory of car accessories when it comes to charging your car is the Beatit D11 800A Peak 12V Portable Car Jump Starter. This car charging accessory has the capacity to jump-start unleaded, diesel (up to 5.5L) and gas (up to 7.5L) cars. With two USB outlets of 5V, you can lend a hand to those in need by giving a jump start or charging personal devices.

It can be used for camping, traveling, hiking, emergencies and for everyday use, making it the ideal car accessory to have at hand. On a single charge, this compact and portable lithium battery has a jump start rate of 30 jump starts. The simple design features an LED screen to observe the remaining battery power, it also features an in-built 100-lumen flashlight with three flashing settings (including S0S flashes), making it easy to see day and night.

Containing spark-proof technology, reverse polarity protection and a mistake-proof design, this car gadget can be attached safely to almost any battery. Come rain, hail or shine, you will be able to charge your car or devices with this awesome car accessory for men.

April 11, 2019 / Comments Off

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