Just a reminder. If you drive in Japan, get a dashcam. Your Japanese is good? Get a dashcam. Your Japanese isn’t good? Definitely get a dashcam.
A guy tried to lie about me burning a red light and hitting him. Yelling at me in front of the cops to show dominance fell flat when dashcam footage was presented.
Moral of the story. Get a dashcam.
35 comments
Either its one of those insurance fraud or that guy wants to push all the blames on you because you are foreigner (?) kinda of situation XD
What a garbage human
Wouldn’t have it been better to wait for his written statement and then have him for insurance fraud too?
I installed front & rear dashcams in the beater Prius soon after getting it last summer. Took about half a day to do a tidy install. If you don’t want to do it yourself then most local garages will do the work for 10,000 to 20,000yen, depending on the complexity of what you need to have done. It will be all wired into the fuse box so you don’t have weird wires hanging all over the place.
The sidebar over at [/r/dashcam](https://old.reddit.com/r/Dashcam/) has a list of suggested models. I went with a Viofo model that I bought [directly from their store on AliExpress](https://viofo.aliexpress.com/store/4637077). I’ve had Viofo dashcams in past cars and they’ve been great, happy with the quality in the beater Prius too. They stand up well to the Japanese summer heat which many other brands (even more expensive ones) do not.
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Edit: If you want to install dashcams yourself then YouTube is a *fantastic* source of how-to videos. You will likely find videos specific to your car model. Depending on what you drive that may mean Japanese only but even if your Japanese is terrible the videos will help a lot as you can still *see* how the install is done.
I would have given anything to see his face when the dashcam came out
Got one installed the moment that crazy guy was the on the news for starting the whole あおり運転 thing on the highway.
I use a Garmin dashcam. Has a parking mode so it even records when you’re away from your car. Handy when using those over night carparks.
Can anyone recommend a bicycle camera?
Before coming here I thought that the Japanese people were more civilized with the traffic rules, but boy I was wrong. I quickly installed one in my car.
Don’t have a car? Get a dashcam
Great advice, nowadays dashcams are basically a must. I was thinking of buying one for my bicycle, to feel safer when I ride around because you never know. Idiots are always ready to blame you and as a foreigner I’m always a bit afraid police would side with the local idiot rather than with me.
A dashcam with WiFi preferably so that you can retrieve the necessary footage immediately after the incident occurs and provide the evidence when the police arrive at the scene. With a normal dashcam you have to remove the SSD card then upload it to your computer via a card reader. By the time you do that the police may have already completed and filed their report.
Get a dashcam!
In this economy, I’ve heard people who “got hit” on purpose so he can extract money from you.
Get a dashcam!
One more step to add. Only say you have the dashcam when cops arrived.
Share the footage! r/IdiotsInCars
Sorry to hijack your post.
I don’t plan on getting a car anytime soon but I’m planning a lot of trips by renting cars.
Do car rentals have dashcams? Or would I be able to temporarily at my own dash cams?
What he did is called 当たり屋 and it’s a crime, it used to be very common after the economic bubble popped and many people lost their job (or at least media outlets were reporting them nearly on a daily basis).
Most of the time it was the guy throwing himself on a car stopped at a red light but every so and on, some would just jump on moving cars to get real injuries.
More information here.
[https://www.adire.jp/lega-life-lab/staged166/](https://www.adire.jp/lega-life-lab/staged166/)
Always, ALWAYS have a dashcam. I was t boned by a drunk driver in my silvia. I was coming to a stop light and the guy was parked on the side next to a bar with coworkers in the car, guessing bonenkai. I am going straight and he pulls out, no light or signal and nails my back quarter panel. Everybody in the car takes off and the driver gets out stinking of sake.
Japanese cops (close to military base so EXTREMELY biased) would not even check his bac and tried to word the situation as my fault. In the end the best i got was 50/50, and that took 2 years. Dash cam is non negotiable in my cars from now on.
I’ve always wondered how you present the dash cam footage in this situation, since it hasn’t happened to me yet. Do you just give the sim card to the police? Some cameras don’t play well/at all unless you get the camera’s software. Do the police have all that software already or have their own?
OK I’m going to buy one. Do you have any recommendations? Is the rear camera necessary? I don’t want to spend a fortune on it.
Driving a kei (Suzuki Spacia).
I think I will try to install it by myself.
“If you drive ~~in Japan~~, get a dashcam.”
FTFY.
Can dashcams be easily mounted and dismounted? I don’t have a car but I started renting cars so it would be nice to bring one along for peace of mind. Or can I just use my Gopro with a suction mount?
I’ll never not drive with a dash cam
I think that’s everyone in the world. Not just Japan.
A few years back when I did not have a dashcam, I was stopped in a construction zone and a guy came out of a side street and hit my right rear. The right of my bumper and right tail lamp and his front bumper were damaged. We agreed at the scene and exchanged info, but then he concocted a story to the insurance people that I was speeding and had hit him as he was coming out (I suspect since he lived right there, he was used to barreling out without paying much attention). Insurance tried to say I was 90% at fault, despite detailed reports from police and me showing the physical impossibility of his assertion. I argued for probably three months citing the construction and the fact I was at a full stop, and finally they followed up with the city, and sure enough, construction at that location on that date. But it was a ridiculous process, them reducing my “fault” percentage from 90, to 80, to 70 etc, and I insisting, no, I’m 0% at fault. The final conversation with insurance where I made them admit he lied, was sooo satisfying. He had to pay 100%.
But, get a dashcam. It’s so much easier.
Edit: word for clarity
This has never happened to me before but I will be getting a dashcam as soon as my next paycheck arrives. For this very reason – if something happens I want to be able to present proof it wasn’t my fault.
I almost T-boned someone today because he blew a stop sign. Dash cams go in all my cars. It’s the first thing that gets installed.
I also go front and rear cameras
Just a heads up, flick that mute button when your fighting with your misses in the car otherwise she’ll take your money and kids.
Works the other way too when your hit, complain about how much your neck hurts just after impact.
r/idiotsincars please
Any recommendations for a motorcycle cam?
Always considered this if I ever own a car, do people own or have recommendation for dashcams for car share or rental cars?
On a only slightly related note, a neighbor’s car has a picture frame on its dashboard. Thought it was a drawing of Jesus (????) from the distance and thought to myself “but why a picture frame on the dashboard?” Got too curious one day and approached the car. It was a sign that said “24 hour surveillance”
Sorry neighbor, I really thought it was Jesus
I have side mirrors, use reflective clothing and lights at night, and am a very aware cyclist, but I still use a go pro as a camera on my bicycle everytime I cycle to work. There are some nutters on the road and I dread a situation where it’s my word against someone’s and I don’t have the footage.
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I have a helmet cam. A couple months ago, a guy ran a stop sign right in front of me. I hit the brakes and honked at him.
He proceeds to stop his shitty beat up old kei truck (because of course it’s an old guy in a kei truck) and get out to yell at me saying, “Using the horn is aggressive.” Like, you goddamn ass-clown, you got out of your car to confront me after you broke the law.
Anyway. He is now saying I hit his truck with my motorcycle and went back to gather information. I declined to give him mine. I said, let’s just go talk to the police at the coban over there. He gleefully agrees and has this smug look on his face, still denying he did anything wrong.
The footage was already on my phone. 4k. His idiot, mouth-breathing face behind the wheel, clearly running the stop sign. I showed him and pointed at my chin, where the camera lives. You could see the hamster in his brain running as fast as it could on the little wheel. “No, it’s a waste of time. Nevermind.” But now *I insisted* we go to the police. “Come on, don’t you want to go to the police?” Dude actually *ran* back to his kei truck and took off, nearly hitting a Mazda 3 with a family inside…
Tokyo drivers are some of the most entitled, egregious, moronic and dangerous drivers ice ever seen in my life.