Expert explains why he went from being 'very' anti-dash cam to pro-dash cam and shares why every single driver should have one

About 16 percent of American drivers own a dash cam, and it’s a group that’s expected to grow in the coming years.

As more and more drivers weigh up getting one, what do people need to know?

Supercar Blondie spoke to Gary Digva, the founder of automotive technology company Road Angel.

He revealed exactly what everyone needs to know about dash cams, why he changed his mind on the technology, and some of the footage he’s seen over the years.

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Should every driver have a dash cam?

Absolutely. Everybody should have a dash cam, and I think it’s vital, in today’s world and society, that dash cams are probably the most valuable accessory after a speed awareness product you could have in the car.

Now, I was very anti-dash cams when I started this business many years ago because many concerns customers and users have is privacy.

However, with the prevalence of smartphone technology, blogging, YouTube, dash cams are very familiar and very common now, and we’ve seen that over the years.

So, from myself being an anti-dash cam person 15 years ago to me being a pro-dash cam person means we see the benefits.

And the benefits to the motorist are that, one, it’s a watchful eye over you.

So no matter if you get into an accident or not, you’ve got a backup of what’s happened to you or your vehicle as evidence.

And if you think of a lady driving alone at night, and something happens to her vehicle, and she pulls over, and somebody’s there to help, they will have a very different view if they see a little red light flashing at them from the front of a windscreen.

With Road Angel dash cams in particular, we designed our dash cams to operate 24 hours a day. So many other dash cams in the marketplace only record when you’re in the car.

But, actually, most people only spend a couple of hours in the car, and the car is alone for 22 of those hours. So using a Road Angel dash cam will ensure that your car’s being monitored over that period.

You mentioned being anti-dashcam when you started Road Angel 15 years ago. What changed your mind?

What changed my mind was that the dash cams, 15 years ago, were very basic, and they used to record through a microphone. They used to record your location.

So when we developed our own dash cams, we stripped out a lot of those worries out of the dash cam.

We gave the power to the consumer. The microphone can be turned on and off if you want to. Your location service can be turned off, so they’re not monitoring you; your data is secure because it’s in the UK, and it’s your data.

Our dash cam is so prevalent that we’re now the global supplier to Bentley for dash cams.

And if you think of Bentley’s customers being the most premium customers out there, crème de la crème, they rely on Road Angel, because we give them the confidence that our dash cams are the best.

When you founded Road Angel, had you already started to change your mind on dash cams?

Road Angel was founded on the basis of speed camera awareness.

Then, from that progression, we went into satellite navigation systems, and then, when smartphones became big technology, we moved onto dash cams, because we could see they were a growing market.

What’s one thing that people never ask about a dash cam, but they really should?

I think people really don’t ask about the technology of recording, the SD card itself.

You could produce the most expensive, the best dash camera in the world. It could be £1,000 or £10,000, but people never really give two thoughts about the memory and where that medium is being recorded.

And, ultimately, it doesn’t matter how good your dash camera is. The single point of failure for that dash camera is gonna be the SD card. If that’s corrupted, if that’s not suitable, then you may as well not have a dash camera.

So I would say the biggest question people don’t ask is: ‘What SD card should I buy for this product in order for it to operate correctly?’

We had this problem when we first produced our dash cameras, so we investigated with our R&D teams. We started to produce our own SD cards to make them suitable for our dashcams.

Is there something that people don’t realize dashcams can be used for?

So one of the additional benefits is reporting bad driving.

Recently, a friend of mine went to a speed awareness course. He came back, and he said:

“I was quite surprised that most people on that course weren’t caught by speed cameras; they were caught by other road users.”

I’ve seen it firsthand, I’ve been sitting in traffic picking up the children from school, and you get that person who’s not willing to wait, and they’ll mount the curb, and they’ll drive on your left-hand side, and, they’ll drive on the pavement [sidewalk], and they’ll cut somebody up.

And that footage there is then getting sent to the police. So users and motorists are using dash cameras to let the police know that people are breaking the law.

The other added benefit of a dash camera is the perspective that it gives you.

If you park your vehicle on your driveway, nine times out of 10, you probably don’t have a camera looking at that driveway. If something happens to your house, there’s a good chance it’s been recorded on your dash cam.

A prime example of that was my brother’s house, which was broken into a couple of years ago. They got nothing going into the house, but they got loads of footage coming out of the house because the dash cam caught it.

What do you think has been the most shocking sort of footage you’ve seen on a dash cam?

What I do see a lot of is bad driving. After COVID, driving progressively got worse, and the amount of accidents that could happen on the road due to poor driving is unbelievable.

Pedestrians on the road – with people now glued to their smartphones and wearing their headphones, they have no regard for traffic, and they just walk across the road, and they don’t mind about their children walking ahead of them.

And I’ve seen lots of possible fatalities being avoided, caught on dash cameras, because people aren’t paying attention.

Have you ever seen any footage that has impressed you?

We love cars, and that’s some of the footage that we always collect. So recently, on my own dash cam, I was behind an SF 90XX Ferrari, on the streets of Nottingham, UK, just driving around. A very special car.

That’s one thing dash cams are great for is if you’re going for a car meet or you’re into vehicles, you don’t wanna get your mobile phone out, but your dashcam will film whatever you’re seeing.

So if there’s any rare or exclusive or exotic cars on the road and you go past them, your dash cam’s certainly gonna capture that footage.