Picture a court judge that hears two different stories, both about the same traffic accident. One story is told by the plaintiff and the witnesses for the plaintiff. The defendant and the witnesses for the defendant present the other story.
Which story should the judge believe? If one of the drivers had a dashboard camera, the pictures from that same camera could be used as evidence. The availability of such evidence would simplify the judge’s task i.e. that of deciding which of the two stories to believe. Hence, it would highlight the value linked to the evidence that comes from various dashboard cameras.
How the judge approaches his or her task
Judges understand how the dashboard camera (dash cam) works. The men and women that sit at a courtroom bench realize that it starts to operate as soon as the ignition gets turned on. The pictures taken by the dash cam can be used to sort out any conflicting statements that might have been made by a plaintiff or a defendant in a personal injury case.
The judge’s task entails determining the answer to three questions, so that the jury can be given the answer to each question. What happened before the accident? What happened during the accident? What happened after that accidental collision? In order to ensure enforcement of the law, the court needs to find the answer to each of those questions.
How the dash cam helps judges
The dash cam shows the nature of the activity that was taking place in front of the cam-equipped vehicle at a given point in time. It indicates the position of all the nearby vehicles during that some span of time. In that way, it can reveal what was happening during the period that preceded a given collision.
In addition, the dash cam’s presence in a damaged vehicle can be used to search for any witnesses to the damage-causing event. It can be used to obtain the license plate number of each such vehicle. In addition, it allows both the defendant’s and the plaintiff’s lawyer to get a better description of the car, truck, van or SUV that any one witness was driving.
Moreover, there is always the chance that a witness could have been driving a car with a dash cam. That would give added support to the witness’ testimony. Such support would prove quite valuable, if a drive-by-accident had been seen by only one or two other drivers.
Imagine, for instance, how hard it might be to locate the guilty party, if some driver has hit a pedestrian and then has disappeared. Picture that happening at night along a road that was in a small town and did not get much traffic. How could the report from one witness be given added support? Ideally, a witness’ dashboard camera could be used to provide that support and maybe even identify the guilty driver. All of this evidence can be provided to the personal injury lawyer in Chatham to strengthen your claim.