Sunday, March 18, 2012

Garmin Adds Driver Alerts to New Dash Cams

dashcam30-35_group

This week, Garmin has released information on its next generation of dash cams, which will provide not only an impartial eyewitness but also some new safety features. Garmin’s dash cams aren’t a huge segment of the GPS company’s business, but it has been working in the market some this year with the release of several new updates earlier this year. While these new units, the Dash Cam 30 and 35 will not include GPS routing, they will come with new features including driver alerts.

The new driver alerts will only be available on the Dash Cam 35 and include:

  • Forward Collision Warnings – designed to help users keep optimal distance from other cars, this warning will be turned on automatically at 30 MPH and will warn if drivers are too close to the cars in front of them.
  • Lane Departure Warnings
  • Red Light and Speed Camera Warnings –

The forward collision warnings and lane departure warning features do have some limitations and might not work properly if the camera is not aligned properly or is obstructed. You can read more about functionality and appropriate conditions here. As this feature is pretty new, it looks like there are a lot of pretty common conditions that could make it not work optimally, so I’m not sure if it will even be worth the extra money.

Either way, both the Dash Cam 30 and 35 will feature incident detection, which automatically saves video footage in the case of an incident. They also will have the popular snapshot feature so that users can take photos of property damage after a collision. Both units use a replaceable microSD card for storage of footage, which can be recorded in 1080p, 720p or WGA formats. in both bright and low-light conditions.

The Dash Cam 35, in addition to the driver alerts, also includes some GPS functionality and will automatically stamp all footage with dime, date, latitude, longitude and speed. The date and time can be set manually on the Dash Cam 30, but GPS functionality is not included.

The Dash Cam 30 and 35 are expected to be available in the fourth quarter of this year. The Dash Cam 30 is expected to retail for around $169.99 while the Dash Cam 35 will retail for $199.99. For more information on Garmin’s dash cam line, visit Garmin’s website or check out the press release.

Comments

  1. Been using the Nuvicam for a week now and find the driver awareness features: forward collision and lane departure warnings of limited value. Actually I disabled the lane departure. I suppose if I wasn’t paying attention to the traffic ahead the forward collision warning might prevent a finder bender. The warning sound is not really loud enough but I guess if it were really loud the constant bleeping in commuting traffic would get tiresome very quickly.

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