Monday, 16 June 2014

TTW presents MI-Witness to London Region

The London Region’s January meeting held at Travellers Insurance, Redhill was attended by 20 delegates including guests from Zurich and Keoghs Solicitors

Steve Warren, consultant from TTW presented MI-Witness HD, the new award winning

in-vehicle camera system/CCTV accident recording system designed to provide all drivers with the best protection against fraudulent insurance claims on our roads.

Predominantly made for Renault, they have approved the camera system and it is now in their dealerships, Vauxhall and BMW we were advised may next approve the camera for use. The system can also be purchased individually by the general public and by fleets including the commercial vehicle arena. The system is not limited to cars and lorries, there are kits available for motorcycles and pedal cyclists.

Installation is a simple ‘plug and play’ with the camera mounting on the screen and power coming from a cigarette lighter, like a satellite navigation system.

The 120⁰ (HD) angle camera records in real time at a rate of six megabits of data per second, in full colour along with audio recording for fifty minutes before looping/overwriting unless switched off or on event is manually saved.

The device connects to a global positioning satellite via built in receiver recording the vehicle’s speed (stated to be accurate to plus or minus 0.5mph) as well as latitude and longitude.

Data is recorded/stored and uploaded to a personal computer or similar using the standard 8GB SD card. Larger capacity SD cards (up to 32GB) are available allowing extended recording time or re-configuration between recording quality, real time events and parking mode.

The audio function records within the vehicle’s interior through the integrated microphone – useful for private hire vehicles or where a vehicle’s index plate out of the cameras view needs to be recorded.

Manual snap shots can also be taken outside the vehicle with the two mega pixel camera allowing images to be captured following an event, e.g. road traffic accident, showing vehicles’ final resting positions, damage sustained etc.

A parking mode will monitor the vehicle’s surround (within the camera’s lens angle) and automatically store any events rather than simply re-write every 50 minutes and lose the data.

At a retail cost of £249.00 and up to £380.00 (additional package including case, second camera etc. etc.) the unit is not only affordable but certainly has the potential to pay for itself a number of times over and save a considerable amount of time and money in insurance excess outlays and legal battles.

The legal aspects and implications of owning such equipment and possessing evidence of events (including self-discriminations and legal access rights) are yet to be seen but various event footage shown to the delegates clearly demonstrated how this equipment has the potential to reveal undisputed evidence which may be of great interest to the police, insurers or solicitors.

Darren Morgan