When the appearance of an ambulance is not welcome!

[deema]

I love my new van, it's a delight to drive, and being long wheel base is far better IMO than it's shorter brothers. Weekly it gets a wash and clean out, yep, I love it. Today, trundling down a country lane I spy blue lights coming towards me at a rapid rate. An amblulance clearly needed to get somewhere quickly. My happy demeanour was quickly replaced with concern the closer it came, the ambulance was driving almost down the middle of the road which could easily accommodate both vehicles with room to spare. Concern turned to shear fear, as a collision appeared inevitable. Pulling the van over into the ditch, tree branches scraping down the side of my pride and joy, I hoped we could advert disaster.

The sickening sound of your divers mirror being torn off its mounting is an unwelcome sound. Which, is closely followed by despair as the ambulance continues at break neck speed down the middle of the road seen through the remaining passenger side mirror.

I truly hope who ever needed assistance was OK, and I understand the need for haste in such situations. But a damper on my day it did make, along with the cost of a compete new door mirror.

This evening whilst sipping a refreshment or two to mellow the disposition I'm contemplating the virtues of a dash cam. Any recommendations?

 

[Robbo3]

Like oil in an engine - any is better than none. Get the cheapest you can find as it's all about showing the circumstances & proving what happened rather than being able to read number plates.
At the bottom end of the market the Chinese imports tend not to have make or model names. Mine cost £9.99 & is called 'Portable Car Camcorder'.

Edit: Waste a couple of hours & check out Techmoan's website for reviews of 58 dashcams & other stuff
- http://www.techmoan.com/blog/category/car-dvr-dashcams

 

[novocaine]

yer go watch techmoan. careful he's a bit addictive, especially when you live in the same damn town so keep recognising places.

 

[Ring]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Transcend-Driv ... d+dash+cam

I have that one look at the review on techno man on youtube.

Jim

 

[esox20]

Should report to ambulance service and make a claim....I have been a paramedic for 23 years...totally unacceptable to drive like that, we are highly trained driving professionals as part of our job.....allegedley !

 

[Keithie]

not good ... but also you might not really want to be complaining about ambulances down any official channels .... hopefully not, but one day you might need one.

 

[transatlantic]

Should report to ambulance service and make a claim....I have been a paramedic for 23 years...totally unacceptable to drive like that, we are highly trained driving professionals as part of our job.....allegedley !

I have a question for you sir! .. what should a driver do if they're going ~60mph on a single carriageway with an emergency vehicle coming up behind, and on coming traffic going the same speed?

The emergency vehicle can't overtake because of the on-coming traffic.

should you :

- keep going at the legal speed until you see somewhere you can pull in to?

or

- keep going at the legal speed until the ambulance can overtake? (gap in on-coming traffic)

I've always done the first, but each time I do it, it feels wrong and that I'm slowing them down. Me having to slow down from 60 takes a bit of time, add to that the time to pull in, all of which delaying the service vehicle. Now add to that, them having to do that for *each* vehicle they come across on the single carriageway!? Surely it would be much quicker if we didn't slow down and pull in, but instead continue going the legal speed limit until they can safely overtake themselves?

Even if they don't get an opportunity to overtake, surely people stopping to pull in takes valuable time? .. time that could be reduced if they just kept going?

 

[Limey Lurker]

I read all Techmoan's reviews, and ended up buying the Mobius, and I am extremely pleased. It doesn't have a screen, which, when comparing it to other dash-cams, looks to be a drawback, but it has such a wide Angle of View that a screen is not needed. If you point it in the general direction of the road ahead you will get all the information you'll need. The quality of the reprodution is equal to camera many times more expensive. It takes video in 1080, 720, 60 fps and 30fps. Loop record. Still photos. Time lapse still from 0.25 secs up to 1 day. And a lot of other things that I have not used yet. The camera seems to have a wider range of possible settings(colour balance, contrast, tungsten/fluorescent, sharpness and lots more) than my 5-times more expensive Canon! Tech Moan's recommended Ebay seller is first-class; I thought that I had a problem with mine and they could not have been more helpful (it wasn't the camera, it was my fault; I suffered brain fade when I was reading the manual). HTH.

 

[deema]

Thanks chaps, I've started going through the recommended utube. I've read that you can get a discount on your insurance if you have an insurers 'approved dash cam' but not sure I want to feel obliged / only insured if I have it on. There may instances I'd prefer it to be off!! We all have bad days!!

 

[Robbo3]

One of the benefits of a bottom of the range dash cam without Geo-location is that :
• No one can prove it was turned on at the time
• No one can prove that it had a memory card installed
• No one can prove that it was recording at that time

I carry a spare memory card in the glove compartment so that, in the event of something untoward happening, I can quickly swap them over & any proof stays with me.

 

[stuartpaul]

Which are currently recommending Nextbase 312 GW, - supposed to be quite a good model.

Seriously consider a complaint to the local ambulance, - you might find they had a dash cam and it'll show if they were driving like plonkers.

I'm afraid of the 3 main emergency services the ambulance service tend to be the worst drivers and in work I did in blue light driver training their training was woeful in comparison.

 

[esox20]

transatlantic...pulling in if possible is great help, if not possible, when a gap appears where an ambulance could pass, indicate and slow down toggle as much space as possible for ambulance to overtake......they are not fast we need all the help we can get!

 

[Matt@]

disgusting behaviour by the ambulance driver!!! I'd be livid....

 

[DiscoStu]

BlackVue are used by loads of my Land Rover mates and it's clear to see why when you see the play back. The quality is excellent. I bought a £50 HD one a while ago and it does show you what happened but what you find is that the lens is poor and it's probably very compressed recording so the fine detail isn't there, and by that I mean you can't read number plates which is often really important. The nextbase Ines from Halfords get decent reviews as well.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Alexam]

I have been looking at dashcams recently and find the reviews on this site are really superb. So many to choose from and all the details plus and minus are given in the reviews http://www.techmoan.com/what-is-the-best-dashcam

Malcolm