Can Dashcam Footage Help My Injury Claim?

Jed Dietrich, Esq., Recognized as a Best Lawyer and American Institute of Personal Injury Attorneys 10 Best Attorney’, is Committed to Protecting the Rights of Car Crash, Motorcycle Accident, and Pedestrian Injury Victims and Their Loved Ones. If You Were Seriously Injured and Have Dashcam Footage to Back Up Your Claim, Our Experienced Team of Attorneys Could Help You Negotiate a Settlement or Secure a Court-Ordered Award.

Car accident lawsuits often turn into competing narratives, with both sides blaming the other. You might know exactly what happened, but there is no guarantee that the evidence will reflect your version of events. The other driver could lie; the insurance company might cut corners and refuse to approve accident-related treatment that your doctor recommended. Without the right evidence, negotiating a settlement or obtaining a court-ordered award could be all but impossible.

But if you had a dashcam on at the time of the accident, it could change the calculus of your claim in its entirety.

Since our founding in 2005, the Dietrich Law Firm P.C. has helped our clients across the state secure more than $300 million in damages. We could help you, too. Call Jed Dietrich, Esq., today at 716-839-3939 to speak to a car accident lawyer and schedule your 100% free, no-obligation consultation as soon as possible.

New York courts will usually accept dashcam footage as long as the recording is authentic, original, and has not been edited or otherwise altered. To be accepted, the video must be relevant to the accident. This means that it must clearly depict the events immediately preceding the accident.

Note that New York is a one-party-consent state for video recording: you are legally entitled to film from your vehicle without requesting or obtaining consent from other drivers.

If your footage clearly and unambiguously shows the accident, it could easily serve as an objective, near-irrefutable record of what happened before, during, and after a collision.

Your dashcam footage could help:

1. Determine who had right-of-way at an intersection;
2. Establish if any involved party attempted to apply their brakes or take other evasive action; and
3. Prove that the defendant was likely distracted, aggressive, or intoxicated at the time of the crash.

Recordings can also preserve minor, but important, details that most people simply would not remember. This can help resolve questions about the position of nearby vehicles, the presence of environmental hazards, and discrepancies between competing testimonies.

Police reports can be inaccurate if they are based on eyewitness testimony or misleading evidence. If your accident was not thoroughly investigated, it is also possible that local law enforcement made on-the-spot determinations about causation that can be disproved through forensic analysis or a careful consideration of other evidence, like dashcam footage.

A police report would not usually make or break a personal injury claim, but an officer’s word still counts for a lot in court. If your dashcam footage contradicts the police department’s determination, your personal injury lawyer could help you request a correction before even filing a lawsuit.

You have probably heard the saying that a “picture is worth a thousand words.”

Dashcam footage follows the same logic. Judges, juries, and insurance companies tend to put more trust in seemingly objective forms of evidence like photographs and video recordings than they do in eyewitness testimony. An original and unaltered video, after all, shows events exactly as they occurred, leaving very little open to interpretation.

For this reason, dashcam recordings do not always work in plaintiffs’ favor. If the video shows that you were distracted or inattentive, neither the insurance company nor the court will ignore it; suing does not mean that evidence cannot work against you, too.

Your claim would not be dismissed if you are found partly at-fault. New York employs a modified comparative negligence rule when assessing liability. Under this system, accident victims are still entitled to sue as long as they were no more than 50% at-fault for the accident. This may seem generous, but it comes with a big caveat: your court-ordered award will be reduced proportionate to your level of liability. If, for example, you receive a $100,000 verdict but are found 20% at-fault for the accident, a corresponding amount of 20% will be deducted from the original award, leaving you with $80,000.

Another, somewhat less-obvious problem for personal injury plaintiffs is that recordings capture absolutely everything that appears within the camera’s field of view and nothing from outside of it. If an external condition or off-screen environmental hazard caused or contributed to your collision, you may have to undertake a separate investigation to ensure there are no gaps in your case.

If you have dashcam footage of your accident, you should not sit on it.

Although dashcam videos are not unquestionable, they still serve as incredibly strong, compelling evidence in personal injury claims. Your footage can be used to verify your narrative, eliminate ambiguities, and ensure that the other driver cannot get away with lies or misleading excuses.

However, evidence of wrongdoing is only one component of a personal injury lawsuit.

In order to win in court, you need more than a video. The Dietrich Law Firm P.C. could help you cover all your bases by:

1. Investigating the causes and circumstances of your accident;
2. Interviewing eyewitnesses to determine if events that took place off-screen contributed to the collision;
3. Subpoenaing surveillance camera footage to see if the defendant was driving recklessly, distracted, or erratically prior to the crash;
4. Assessing your damages to ensure that any settlement you negotiate or award you receive provides fair compensation for both your existing losses and anticipated future needs; and
5. Aggressively representing your interests, whether in negotiations with the insurance company or at trial.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that a video alone can win your case; it could come at the cost of your rights. Contact the Dietrich Law Firm P.C. today to speak to an experienced personal injury lawyer and find out how we could help you use your dashcam footage to build a better, stronger case.

Call the Dietrich Law Firm P.C. immediately at 716-839-3939 so that our aggressive, tenacious, and hardworking personal injury lawyers can fight to obtain the best result for your personal injury claim in Syracuse, New York. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and there is never a fee until we WIN for you!