SILICON
SILIC
CHIP
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Editorial Viewpoint
New motor vehicles should have
built-in dashcams
After being at the receiving end of several unprovoked “road rage” incidents, I decided to fit front
and rear dashcams to all my family’s vehicles. The
strange part about this is that all these vehicles
have reversing cameras, and some even have 360°
cameras to help with parking, yet there is no obvious way to record the images from those cameras.
Admittedly, those cameras are designed more
for showing images of what’s immediately surrounding the vehicle rather than traffic at large, but they could easily be ‘paired up’ with wideangle cameras like those used in dashcams, and wired back to a central
recording unit.
This could be in the centre console or glovebox, and have an SD card
slot for recording video from those cameras while the ignition is on. And
many vehicles already have GPS navigation, so they could easily log your
position and speed to that card as well. Even for vehicles that don’t have
navigation, a GPS module would hardly cost sheep stations to add.
The cameras are quite cheap to manufacture. A decent HD dashcam
with GPS and all the required electronics, including video encoding, costs
around $100 in a retail shop. OEMs would be paying a fraction of that.
Once you take into account the installation labour, wiring and so on,
I would estimate that adding front and rear cameras and the necessary
recording hardware would add less than $200 to the cost of a vehicle.
Even on the cheapest new cars, that isn’t a huge increase, and I for one
would gladly pay for the convenience.
It would be a great selling point for manufacturers who start doing
this across their range. After all, who wants cameras stuck to their windscreen with wires running to the nearest accessory power point? And
if the cameras are integrated into the vehicle, they would have an even
clearer view of what’s going on around you.
I am aware that Tesla vehicles already do this. While their cameras
seem to have been originally intended to enable semi-autonomous driving, they also record video (apparently, whether you want them to or not!).
And they have even recently added a “Sentry mode” to record would-be
thieves and vandals.
But Tesla is a niche brand. They sold around 1000 vehicles in Australia
last year, out of a total of 1,153,000 – ie, about 0.1%. Citroën also offer
a built-in dashcam in their C3 model, released in March 2018, although
this is a $600 optional extra. Citroën are also a very minor player in the
Australian car industry. It’s about time that mainstream manufacturers
start offering similar features.
It’s a sad fact that these days, you need to record what’s going on around
you to protect yourself while driving. There are just too many incompetent and aggressive drivers around to ignore any more. So when somebody busy updating their Twitter, watching YouTube or doing their best
‘Stig’ impression damages your car, you’ll be able to show that it wasn’t
your fault.
I have to wonder, with all the technology going into vehicles these days
like radar cruise control, autonomous braking, lane keeping, semi-autonomous driving, tyre pressure monitoring, phone integration, infotainment
and so on, why such a feature has not already become widely available.
Nicholas Vinen
Derby Street, Silverwater, NSW 2148.
2
Silicon Chip
Australia’s electronics magazine
siliconchip.com.au
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