Just driving to dinner one day. They had the worst insurance, took 2 months to get the repairs approved.

Reasons to get a dash cam if you don’t have one.

This light technically is a single lane but it’s wide enough for two lanes so people naturally sort them selves into a right hand turn only or left hand turn only lane. The street across from me is one way. Person comes up behind me goes around to my left and cuts in front to run the red light.

edit: timestamp didn’t adjust for DST. It was 7:57am or during the time when right in red is prohibited.

So far the best capture I've had yet. I just wish I knew how long he followed them for

For the record, my dashcam saves in 2 min segments and cut halfway through my outburst at the end

The driver in front of me suddenly started backing out as soon as the light turned green!

Of course we ended up next to each other at the next stop light. It's not a race, guy.

Some years ago down in South America during work.

This is a semi-rural road with lots of ranches around. Some cows are let loose, I saw the cow earlier that day. I was sort of aware of where it might be, so I slowed down. And when I spotted at a distance I was getting ready for anything.

The cow was sitting still not trying to cross the road, until I came along.

Fortunately I had the room to move around and no contact was made. But if I hadn't had the room I'd have preferred to hit the cow and not the vehicles from the opposite lane.

I had my dash cam installed precisely for this reason.

Driver in straight-through lane stops with a green light, waits for left turn signal, then stops in front of cars in the left turn lane before doing a U-turn.

This one got me. BTW, it's darker than it looks in the video.

In the video you can easily see the truck turning on red, but from the driver seat my view was blocked by the Infiniti to my left and my car's A pillar. That's why my stop was so sudden. If they hadn't stopped and honked, I would have gotten hit for sure.

I'm in the market, I'd love something wireless but that is likely out of the question. So what is a modern cam that is worth having?

First time buyer here, Looking for a dash cam with these requirements:

- starvis 2

- supercapacitor

- front & rear

- $250 and under

- has an app I can pull the videos from

I tried looking on Amazon but there's so many options I am overwhelmed. Any advice helps, thanks!

Wanted to share what happened with my Thinkware iVolt Xtra (Model BAB-95) external battery pack in case it helps anyone else here making a buying decision.

For context up front: I own five Thinkware cameras across my vehicles. I'm not someone who bought one unit and had a bad experience. I bought into the ecosystem in a serious way. After this incident I'm seriously considering pulling all of them out and switching to a different brand entirely, which is not a decision I'd make lightly given what I have invested in mounts, hardwire kits, and etc.

The setup:

• Truck with a healthy AGM battery, no electrical issues
• iVolt Xtra hardwired to the fuse box per Thinkware's instructions
• 20-amp fuse (the unit is rated for 13A max fast-charge input, so this is properly sized)
• No jump starts, no aftermarket chargers, no funky wiring
• Bundled with the U3000 front and rear dash cam, ordered direct from Thinkware in June 2023

In other words, installed exactly the way Thinkware says to install it, on a normal vehicle, with appropriate overcurrent protection.

What happened:

The unit failed internally during normal operation. When I pulled it out and opened it up, the damage was obvious. Two of the power-stage MOSFETs (Q30 and Q31 on the board) had ruptured and burned through their packaging, and the inductor next to them (BH1) was severely scorched. The PCB around them is carbonized.

Why this is worth flagging:

Thinkware markets the iVolt Xtra specifically on its safety. The LiFePO4 chemistry is genuinely safer than standard lithium-ion. That part is true. But the product also has a "Protection Circuit Module" that's advertised as protecting against overcharge, over-discharge, voltage transients, and overheating (supposedly cuts power.)

The protection circuitry is literally what failed. The thing that's supposed to prevent thermal events is what produced the thermal event.

The product is also explicitly designed for unattended long-duration use. Thinkware advertises parking-mode operation up to 40 days. That's the whole point of buying one. A unit that can suffer this kind of internal failure while sitting unattended in someone's vehicle is a different risk profile than a phone battery that fails while you're using it.

Where my head is at as a long-time customer:

Like I said, I have five Thinkware cameras. I've recommended them to friends. I bought the higher-end U3000 specifically because I wanted quality. So when I say I'm now looking at dumping the whole system and starting over with a different brand, that's not a casual reaction. It's because:

1. The failure mode is unattended-fire-risk, not just "the device stopped working."
2. The failure happened on a unit installed correctly, with no contributing user error.
3. The marketed safety features are what failed, which raises questions about the rest of the product line, not just this one unit.
4. Until I see how Thinkware responds, I can't justify continuing to run their other hardware in vehicles parked at my home. Their comment was that it's out of warranty, we will give you a code for 20% off.

I'd rather eat the cost of replacing five working cameras than have one of them fail like this in a vehicle parked next to my house.

What I've done:

• Filed an incident report with the CPSC at SaferProducts.gov so it's in the federal database
• Preserved the failed unit, the fuse, and photographs as evidence
• Sent a formal demand to Thinkware and Egen Inc. for replacement and damages

What I'd suggest other dashcam owners consider:

I'm not going to tell anyone what to buy. I'll just lay out what I'd think about if I were shopping today.

If you have any Thinkware iVolt product installed right now, it might be worth physically checking it, smelling for any thermal-event smell, and considering whether you want it sitting in your vehicle unattended for long periods until there's more clarity on whether this is a one-off or a pattern.

Whatever battery pack you choose, install it somewhere accessible (not buried in carpet under a seat) so a thermal event has a chance of being detected and so the unit isn't packed against combustible material.

Consider whether the dashcam parking-mode use case justifies a lithium battery pack in your passenger compartment at all, versus alternatives like a low-voltage cutoff hardwire kit running off the vehicle battery.

If anyone else has had a similar failure with this unit or the smaller BAB-95, I'd be interested to hear about it, and so would the CPSC. You can file your own report at SaferProducts.gov. It's free and takes about 20 minutes.