Record Number of Dangerous Driving Dashcam Videos Sent to Police

A 31% increase is expected by the end of the year as the NDCSP typically sees a spike in reports of dangerous driving over the summer months, Fleet News reports.  

West Midlands, West Mercia, Northumberland, Surrey and South Yorkshire have already received more than 18,000 submissions in 2024, more than the total number submitted across the UK in the whole of 2021.

The increase could indicate that motorists and fleet operators are increasingly fitting dashcams to their vehicles and therefore more incidents are being caught on camera. 

Benefits of Fitting Dash Cams

If you don’t yet have dashcams in your vehicles, it’s worth considering the benefits of installing them. These include:

• Being able to identify which drivers need coaching to improve their driving habits.
• Receiving an automatic alert about a crash rather than waiting for the driver to report it to you. 
• Protection from fraudulent insurance claims. Dash cam footage can be used to counter a false claim about the number of passengers in a third party vehicle suffering whiplash, for instance, or a crash-for-cash scam where a fraudster has deliberately slammed on their brakes at a roundabout, causing your innocent driver to go into the back of them. 
• Speeding up the time it takes to settle an insurance claim and reducing the cost of the claim.  
• Reduced insurance premiums. Some insurance companies will offer an upfront discount if you have dashcams in your vehicles. If they don’t, you can negotiate at renewal time by providing evidence of the impact dashcams have had on your incident rate and how they fit within a wider risk management programme.
• Potentially recording a thief breaking into the vehicle or a ‘hit while parked’ situation - some dashcams are able to detect motion while the vehicle is parked and will start recording. 

Ultimately, dashcams could reduce vehicle downtime, cut costs and make your fleet safer. 

Reflex Vehicle Hire provides dashcams in commercial vehicles as part of our Safety as Standard commitment to protect drivers and employers.

Our modular suite of safety services, includes:

Flexicam: High quality, forward-facing cameras. The technology includes driver behaviour measurement, crash detection, cloud connected, and reporting and alerts.

Flexicampro: Fatigue and distraction monitoring. The technology includes triggered warnings if the driver needs to take a break, and reporting and alerts. 

Flexicamplus: Combined tracking and dashcam technology. This offers extensive insights into vehicle and driver performance, as well as geo-fencing alerts.

How to Share Dashcam Footage

Dashcam footage can be shared with your insurer and the police but it shouldn’t be uploaded to social media as that puts it in the public domain and may adversely affect any subsequent proceedings, according to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). 

Almost all police forces in England and Wales use the NDCSP but you can contact your local police force directly if they’re not on the portal or you would prefer not to use it.

You can upload footage from any dashcam, action camera, mobile phone or any other type of camera from any manufacturer to the NDCSP. Your driver will also need to provide a written statement online. 

Further Actions 

The police will then review the footage and statement and decide which, if any, offences are made out. 

The footage could show dangerous driving, handheld mobile phone use at the wheel, driving without due care and attention, careless driving, overtaking on solid white lines, the driver not being in proper control of their vehicle, traffic light contravention or any other road traffic offence. 

No further action may be taken or the driver may have to do an education course, receive a fixed penalty notice or be summoned to court.

If the case goes to court or more evidence is required, you’ll be contacted for further details, the NDCSP says.