My generation have failed as parents.

Race riots and communist revolution made strong men and women of my parents' generation.

The indulgent prosperity of the 1980s made weak, nervous cowards of my own.



When I was 18 years of age, I left the small village of Port Charlotte bound for the University of Florida, 200 miles away in a place which neither I nor my family had ever visited. I did so in a 1971 VW Beetle, equipped with a map of Florida, a map of Gainesville, a tupperware container full of mom's deliriously good empanadas, a roll of paper towels, all of my personal effects, and some loose change, a portion of which I used at a payphone to call home upon my arrival to report that I was still alive and had not been kidnapped by gypsies.

The car, being what it was, featured such cutting-edge safety and convenience features as electric headlights, openable side windows, and windshield wipers which frequently worked, provided that it wasn't raining very hard.

Drugs, alcohol, wildly promiscuous sex... These were all things which a nerdy teenager such as myself somehow failed entirely to encounter during that era.

And yet I survived, as did many of you who likewise came of age in that glorious time of giants. A time when men were men and printouts came on green-bar paper with unperforated tractor guides.



In the autumn of this year, my niece will depart the nest and journey westward from Jacksonville to Pensacola, to embark upon her life journey. She will do so in a fairly new Toyota which is equipped with all of the modern conveniences which one would expect. And, yet, my sister has reached out to me (as the family "car guy") with a request that I recommend to her a dash-cam system (front and rear), as she is worried that her dear sweet daughter may become involved in a vehicular accident and require documentation of innocence.



Now, this is the problem with being the engineer in the family. You hotwire one car, you make one expedient repair to the generator of an RV on the side of the road in the middle of Death Valley in August during a family vacation, you devise one system to macerate and pump human waste uphill automatically from a storage tank on a demand-basis, you talk them through (via phone) building one cable to plug my brother-in-law's portable generator which he uses at construction sites into the dryer socket of their home in order to supply power to the fridge and the ceiling fans and the microwave oven and one (AND ONLY ONE) window air conditioner in the aftermath of one of the most devastating hurricanes on record, and suddenly they think that you know everything about vehicles, technology, and the intersection of vehicles and technology.


I know precisely jack-**** about modern dashcams. I have told my sister this, in very simple and clear language. I have also told her that, in my opinion, putting additional technological gadgets in front of an 18 year old who is driving a car might not be the wisest possible course of action.



So... any recommendations here?



And, because my threads always deliver what they promise, a kitten:

 

Resolution is key. A lot of dash cams have poor resolution which means in an accident or other scenario they can be useless. I don't know many specific brands but have watched review videos on YouTube about them. I suggest doing the same and seeing which one is the best for their price range.

 

Look up Blackvue on Amazon. Sort for the one you can afford. They're (in my opinion) the best on the market. Software is easy to use. It NEVER bugs out. It starts up and runs every time and saves as much footage as it has memory. The software tags "events" which i find to be useful. GPS tracking is also very useful.

Mine is about 5 years old now, so obviously the video quality has dramatically improved.

 

I also inexplicably get stuck as the go-to for technical gee-gaws I know nothing about.

I used to put a lot of effort into my recommendations. Now I just check The Wirecutter and plagiarize their hard work.

Easy Button

 

In keeping with current news, and not wanting to expend much effort to distract me from my taxes, I enlisted the top2 (supposedly) AI sources for reviews of the top 3 dash cams based on customer reviews. Notably, they can't agree...



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