Use of dash cams can be helpful, OPP says

‘Dash cams’ — the hands free devices you can mount to your car’s dashboard to record the road in front of you — are catching on in Ontario.

Already popular in Europe, the small cameras have already been known to help with everything from catching police misconduct to capturing images of meteors.

Videos, like the one showing an accident on Highway 17 west of Sudbury last weekend, are helping the cameras catch on. A plume of smoke plumes filled the air and someone was heard frantically calling 911.

The video below shows the Highway 17 crash captured on a dash cam:

“They want to prove to the insurance company exactly what happened in the case of the accident, where with a dash cam, everything is recorded,” said Adam Guerbuez, who runs the Montreal-based website Dashcam Diaries.

The cameras are not just helping with insurance claims, however. OPP Insp. Mark Andrews said police are using footage to help in their investigations all the time.

“All of that kind of material, from a policing perspective, is all good evidence, it’s thing that we would like to see,” Andrews said, adding that police will not take your footage but will only copy it.

Since winter, police in the area have used dashcam videos in at least three separate cases.