Today many dash cams are sold with GPS installed in the car camera unit, giving it the ability to track and display your current speed directly on to a video file.
Dash cam with your speed watermarked on video
Many wonder if they can take this video footage with a watermarked speed overlay into traffic court to get out of a speeding ticket.
Will it help you fight a speeding ticket and prove your innocence?
The short and general answer is no, you typically can’t use dash cam footage in court to fight a speeding ticket based on the speed reading in the video, especially a ticket where you are going a little bit over, like 5 miles per hour over.
However, there are people who have used their dash cam video and watermarked GPS speed to fight a speeding ticket. Below is a video of a man who did just that:
Dash cam speed accuracy
While dash cameras do have fairly accurate speed calculations using their internal GPS, the dash cam has not been validated by an official source for accuracy or calibrated and tested on a regular basis for accuracy. Police radar detection equipment for example is often calibrated (sometimes daily) and tested to verify its accuracy, giving it more credibility in a court of law. This is not the case with a consumer level dash cam that you can buy off of Amazon or in a store.
When a dash cam might help you get out of a speeding ticket
A dash cam may help you get out of a speeding ticket if you are cited for going way over the speed limit and in actuality you were not. Let’s say you got a ticket for going 60 MPH in a 25 MPH speed zone, having dash cam footage that you could show to a judge or jury would make it clear that you were not actually traveling at 60 MPH and were going at a far slower speed of 25 MPH, this would be obvious on the video by using items in the background for a speed reference.
Another scenario where a dash camera could help you get out of a speeding ticket is if a police officer said you entered a speed zone, such as a school zone traveling at an excessive speed, but your video shows that you had clearly slowed down before you actually entered that different speed zone. Having a dual dash cam can help your case, as it will provide more video footage of your speed and surroundings