The Weakest Part Of A Vehicle Camera System

Commercial vehicle camera systems are made up of numerous key components and electronic modules. This includes storage systems, GPS circuitry, communications circuitry, video processing circuitry, etc. The vast majority of vehicle camera systems are very reliable, especially those developed specifically for commercial vehicle use. ProVision’s systems, for example, are military-grade tested to operate perfectly even with high levels of vibration and shock. But there is one major component of every vehicle camera system that has a major flaw. It is such a massive flaw that it could cause you to not have key footage or data when you need it most – after an accident! The problem is, unfortunately, the operator. In other words, you, the human! A vehicle camera system, if properly maintained and used properly, will run fine pretty much indefinitely. The flaw is highlighted when someone physically engages with it in an improper way. Typically, that is to remove the media (SD Card or Hard Disk) in order to review or download footage. The most regular issues we find is that a fleet manager doesn’t power down the system and simply yanks the media out. This can corrupt the disk/card, making the footage inaccessible. Equally, inserting the media incorrectly can mean that the device cannot write to the disk/card, but you may never know until it’s too late! Linked to these human errors are procedural issues in monitoring and maintaining the equipment. For example, the cameras themselves have no moving parts and are very reliable. However, they are exposed to the elements and knocks and damage by debris and other road users. This can mean that they can stop working. But how will you know this? It would require regular checks of the hardware on every vehicle. On larger vehicle fleets, that’s just not practical. So, what’s the answer?