Nearly all of the dash cams currently on the market today come with voice recording capabilities with their built-in microphones.
By default, most dash cameras will start recording both video and audio when you start your car.
Can you disable audio recording?
Most people won’t need to have audio recording in their car for everyday driving and will decide to disable voice recording.
Some people like to have audio recording so they can capture audio of a road rage incident or to record audio of the police if they are pulled over.
A dash camera will come with the ability to turn the audio recording on or off. Some dash cams have a physical button to do this, while others will require that you go into the menu settings area and turn the audio recording off.
Recording audio of passengers
Many taxi, Uber and Lyft drivers want to use their dash camera to record audio of their passengers to protect themselves from false claims and problematic passengers.
Is this an invasion of privacy?
It is not against the terms of use of Uber or Lyft to record audio of your passengers, however, you should provide a warning notice within your car stating that audio and or video is being recorded.
There are states in the US that have old wire tapping laws that put restrictions on recording audio of people in private settings without their consent.
Read more about recording Audio & Video as an Uber or Lyft driver