The UK’s most dangerous drivers are now being monitored more than ever after a new website revolutionised the delivery of footage to police forces across the nation.
The National Dash Cam Safety Portal will allow all road users to send footage of dangerous driving to relevant police forces via a single online hub.
Nextbase, one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of dash cams, has developed the platform to assist both drivers and police forces combine to catch criminal behaviour on the road.
“[It] will enable the police to reduce offences, ultimately making the roads safe for all users.” said Richard Browning, Director of Nextbase.
“Not faced with restraints such as funding, approvals or IT resource, Nextbase has developed the National Dash Cam Safety Portal for purely altruistic reasons, not passing any of the costs of set up or ongoing costs to the police and therefore tax payer.”
It is estimated that there are currently 2.6m drivers in the UK recording dash cam footage, much of which is used in accident insurance claims. However, many more examples of bad driving appear on social media via the dash cams and there is some confusion as to how to submit the footage to the police to catch offenders.
While some forces ask drivers to submit footage via social media, others ask for an email, while others even suggest burning the footage to a DVD and sending it by post.
Nextbase claim that their customers were becoming frustrated at the lack of a mechanism to help the force receive the files and that there was a disconnect between the public and the police.
“This is not about ‘small transgressions’,” continued Nextbase’s Browning. “It is about catching those very high risk drivers. Incidents have to be of sufficient severity for the uploader to be willing to go to court and this is made very clear on the portal.
“Due to the laborious process of uploading a video and the serious onus on the submitter as a witness to attend court, we believe this will mean only the most serious offences are uploaded. As a secondary filter, it is still in the hands of the police to pursue the case, using their discretion as they see fit.
“Ultimately this is about road safety and saving lives, it’s about being preventative and stopping dangerous drivers causing injury or death before that scenario occurs.”
The National Dash Cam Safety Portal is available at: https://www.nextbase.com/dashcamportal