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The four cameras saved me $1000 and my driving record...
- Thread starter Richwcarr
- Start date
Mrcarcrazy
In need of a shrinking gun to zap a plaid with.
I had a similar incident with National Rental. They tried very hard to get a hold of me directly rather than through my insurance company, and tried to get me to accept liability -- even though my insurance company had already sent the dashcam footage! Extortion techniques. Once you pay, you are accepting liability. Side camera (not available on any other car in the market) is what saved me.
The nice thing about rental is that if they don't ding the other party, they will ding the renter. Either way, they have two fights on their hands with two different insurance companies, so they do everything they can to place blame quickly on innocent people. Beware.
The nice thing about rental is that if they don't ding the other party, they will ding the renter. Either way, they have two fights on their hands with two different insurance companies, so they do everything they can to place blame quickly on innocent people. Beware.
OP may I ask what USB drive you purchased that captured the video? Others have mentioned an issue with corrupt files occurring when hitting the save feature. Since your drive definitely worked would like to purchase the same type. Also did you wait until 2 minutes after the end of the incident to hit save, as others have suggested, to prevent possible loss of or corruption of the video?
Thank you for posting your experience. This is an extremely informative thread.
Cheers!
Now that there are four cameras you need a fast USB memory. I had to upgrade from my original cheap (leftover from a previous use) drive. But you don’t need a huge drive as the whole file of recent videos was about 7 GB. I bought a Kingston Digital. $20 for 128 GB (overkill on the size)
Note that my car seems to keep a full hour of video. There were 244 files in the recent folder.
Not sure how the sentry files are managed.
Note that my car seems to keep a full hour of video. There were 244 files in the recent folder.
Not sure how the sentry files are managed.
I bet that the insurance claims for National as well as other rental companies are handled on a contract basis. They are probably paid based on how low they keep the costs to the rental company. My dealings with a normal claim adjuster for the other guy were quite reputable. Since I had decent evidence, they quickly accepted liability with no fuss.
Do get with familiar how TeslaCam and Sentry software works or you could regret it at some point later on, when it’s already too late. There are specifics steps to follow and you need to recognize the icon status. Learn about properly shutting down TeslaCam when it’s been recording so you don’t corrupt the files. I strongly suggest trying out several recording situations and taking a look at the files on your device afterwards. Re-read or read for the first time! the instructions in the online manual.
Also recommend not cheaping out on using old devices (they’ve been written to probably many times already) and flash is a destructive process that “retires” cells that have been written to too many times or due to corruption so you might not have as much capacity as you think. Buffer writing (1-hr TeslaCam driving video) is constant and heavy duty. Now with 4 cameras writing, even more space will be used. Buy something designed for dashcam use (which is much more intense than other types of general file/photo/movie usage). Always good to have a backup device on hand you can plug in quickly if needed.
TeslaCam/Sentry Mode is a fabulous free OTA update many of us got after owning our cars before it came was introduced. Gets better as time has gone by with refinements. Do use it.
huangm777
Member
I know we whine a lot on these forums about missing small accessories and features, but the car really ought to come with a USB/microSD drive to record the dashcam/sentry footage. Not everyone is going to dig into these threads to find the best, least corruptible storage devices for them (like before I read here, I didn't even know that the endurance SD cards existed—and I'm a computer guy). Sentry/dashcam is one of the most prominent security features and is a huge advantage/selling point for Teslas, and it should work out of the box. And it's only like $20-$30 at most.
But then they would have to warranty it, and they probably don't want that responsibility/liability.
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