Impact and Motion Detection in dash cams provide vital safety features, triggering recording when movement or a collision is detected, ensuring crucial evidence is captured when needed.
What is Impact & Motion Detection?
Impact vs Motion Detection
Impact detection refers to a video file being recorded when triggered by an internal, built-in G-sensor. On the other hand, motion detection refers to a video file being recorded when triggered by movement sensed by the video sensor.
These two features ensure that your vehicle is being protected at all times, such as when a person or vehicle pass by and, more importantly, when there is damage to your vehicle.
Impact Detection
When a vehicle is driving on the road, a dash cam will record all footage. This is great and is the basis of what every dash cam will and can do.
Models with impact detection, however, will be able to not only record footage when an impact is detected, but will also store these files away in a separate folder so that they are:
- Easily located in the video folder
- Protected from being overwritten
For example, if your vehicle is hit by another vehicle while being driven, the g-sensor, of which sensitivity can be adjusted, will detect an impact and mark this footage as an event file. The event label will signify the dash cam to store this file differently.
Motion Detection
When a vehicle is parked, only dash cams with parking mode recording will continue to record. Some of these dash cams will not only have impact detection, but also motion detection.
The impact detection in parking mode works the same as when the car is parked and motion detection does what it sounds like - recording will trigger when there is movement detected.
For example, if someone walks by your vehicle, the built-in video sensor will detect movement and start recording. Footage that are recorded this will be marked as motion and also be stored in a separate video folder for the same reason:
- Easily located in the video folder
- Protected from being overwritten
Keep in mind that the motion sensitivity, while adjustable, remains sensitive as the dash cam would rather record something than potentially miss out on important footage.
Thinkware dash cams have some of the best parking mode features. They provide buffered parking mode, which has the ability to record up to 5-10 seconds leading up to the recording.
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