Helmet Camera : Evidence
 

Does anyone use a helmet camera or have used one? Usually, the law enforcement is not supportive of cyclists's claim about harassment, or attack by motorists, and so a helmet camera may be useful. Once a cyclist was beaten up by an angry motorist, and the police believed the "story" of the motorist, that the cyclist attacked the motorist with his bike. But a group of kids filmed the whole incident showing the motorist pounding away at him. Is a helmet camera useful, or a bike mounted camera, such as the Digital Hero 3, GoPro?

http://www.motocrossafrica.co.uk/Helmet%20Camera.jpg
http://www.cyclepath.ca/products/usr...met-camera.jpg
http://www.invisionpowersports.com/c...met_camera.jpg
http://technabob.com/blog/wp-content...tal_hero_3.jpg

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=394724

This thread may help, while it's mostly focused on UK commuters there are a number of US commuters subscribed to the youtube channels. The helmet cameras were successfully used by a number of people as evidence gathering tools.

However, there's also been a few other responses, from both police and the guilty parties, including "it may be illegal" (it's not), "we can't use that" (you can, actually), and so on. It really depends on how hard you're pushing and if you've got all your bases covered.

Wow. So much there.

Yeah, I know that helmet cameras are legal here. Any type of equipment for recording is as well, so long as it is in public domain, public grounds. For instance, riding around on a street, that is fine. But nothing like going into a place of business, school, etc.

The important thing is to keep it covert. Most of the camera lens are a bit larger than I like, but a pinhole camera really isn't good enough.

A guy I know has nifty little mount for his digicam that he puts on his headtube. Might be a RAM mount, I could ask him about it. take pretty good video, and is quite accesible.

Anyway since this happened

http://www.westsidebikeside.com/paul...o-front-light/

He's been riding around with it on all the time. With how big and cheap memory cards are these days you could just leave it running while riding, and delete the video at the end of your ride if nothing eventful happened.

thats one F'd up story. officers like this are the reason so many people have little respect for cops.

Also, the one about the cyclist who was body checked, if there wasn't video evidence, the 22 year old cop would have gotten off the hook, despite blatantly lying. When it comes to hearsay, the word of an officer of the law has much more weight.

Do you think I am being too anal about considering this course of action? I don't want to seem psychotic about protecting myself legally, but the lying that people resort to, and the driving of some motorists does steer me in this direction.

I use the Oregon Scientific ATC 2k with limited success getting police to take my complaints seriously, even with video evidence.
www.bikesafer.blogspot.com

I have also started to use an Oregon Scientific ATC 2K after seeing a fellow commuter was using one, and it defused a situation we were having with a dangerous driver when he pointed to his camera and said "You do know I've filmed all this."

And since I got one, I am seeing more and more people using these cameras. Everyone I meet with them say they got them because the car drivers are such lying scum bags.

Another thing I've noticed is that it is pretty much the same group of drivers. I started to put clips together to make some sort of comedy movie, but it looked staged, as the same cars appeared several times, and one of the drivers must work in a car garage as it was the same driver in several different cars.

I show the odd video to friends so we can all have a good laugh at the idiocy I see on my commute. But in Denmark there is a case in the courts at the moment over putting video of people committing criminal acts up on You Tube, so I can't share them with you all, yet.

Don't put a camera, or anything else, on your helmet. It's not safe if you crash. Put the camera on your handlebars.

Although a 2GB memory card lets my Oregon Scientific ATC 2K record my entire ride, I find it's too battery hungry to record my entire commute every day.

There's a fair bit of criticism of cops in this thread, so let me add a counterpoint: where I live, the cops are great about bikes, and in 5 years of riding I've had only positive interactions with them. Taxis and bus drivers are another story.

+1 on the helmet cam. I ordered an ATC-3k today

No offense, but I read that OS cameras are not very good. Their resolution and capture and picture quality is really poor. But the GoPro Hero 3 is very good.

Would either be good enough to capture licence plates?

True, they're not the most brilliant cameras in the world. When I'm racing I use a lightweight full-HD camera too, and you can tell the difference, especially in the price tag. It's cheap, what more do you want? Yes, you can read license plates if the capture is in daylight. They do have problems with vibration, and with some SD cards. I've found the recommended SD card has more problems than a generic 133x card. Don't ever let it fill the card, i.e. stop it at 1 hour. The software can't handle reaching the end of the card and has ruined more than one card before I worked out what was going wrong. I've found that Li-Ion batteries will last all day, but remember you have to change cards every hour. It doesn't handle cold too well.