Your Next Bike Light Should Have a Camera
Recorded this morning on my way to GBH for a Morning Edition interview. I forgot to bring up cameras during the interview, so I wrote this instead.
It’s time to start recording our bike rides in traffic.
I have been representing cyclists since 2010, and since then the technology for capturing video while riding has improved dramatically. Cameras are smaller, cheaper, and the images are much clearer. Put it all together and you have a pretty compelling case for riding with a “dashcam.”
Why does this matter? Because video is a great way to prove who was at fault for a crash. In my practice I can think of dozens of cases that we would have surely lost if not for the surveillance footage from a random thrift store across the street, or the camera system on an MBTA bus. I’ve found that a couple seconds of grainy video can sometimes make all the difference for my clients. Now just imagine how useful a camera could be if it’s actually mounted to the bike that got hit!
So, how can you protect yourself while you ride? The simplest way is with a bike light that has an integrated camera. While there used to be only a few pricy options, you can now find plenty of companies selling perfectly adequate units for around $50. They’re still waterproof and seem to have a decent battery, though they don’t record video in 4k. However, for our purposes, 1080p is more than sufficient. The key to the setup is that it these cameras record continuously over themselves like a dashcam—no need to delete old files to make room for new ones. You can treat it just like your existing bike light: as long as you keep it charged and turn it on it will do its job.
Both front and rear camera/lights are available, but if you have to pick one, I’d say that video from the front will nearly always be more valuable than rear-facing video. Everyone worries about being hit from behind, but in my experience that’s almost never how a crash occurs. A front-facing camera will capture your perspective as a rider. This is almost always more useful than seeing what was going on behind you.
The only times I’ve found video from rear-facing cameras to be useful is when someone is hit from behind (again, quite rare, but it happens), or when they happen to record someone behind you getting hit. That brings me to my next point: if you ride with cameras (front or rear), you have a real opportunity to help your fellow cyclists if they get hit. That’s why if anyone ever crashes anywhere near you, you should insist that they take your contact information and preserve the video.
I’ve written before about how we have an obligation to speak up and be a witness if we see a crash, but when you’re riding with video that responsibility attaches even if you didn’t actually see what happened. Even if you are 100% certain that your camera was pointing in a different direction at the time of the impact and you don't think you caught anything useful, you should still provide your contact information and preserve the video. That’s because you never know what a camera saw or heard. I can think of multiple cases where video/audio evidence was enormously valuable, even though it did not show the crash itself.
For example: I had a client who was hit by a driver who ran a red light while she was crossing an intersection. She was taken by ambulance before the police arrived, so the report only had his account of what happened. As you can imagine, this driver swore up and down that he had a green light, and that the biker “came out of nowhere.” The police did eventually get my client’s statement, and the report was amended to include it. However, she had a concussion and couldn’t remember anything about what happened. Thankfully, there was a convenience store on the corner that had cameras. None of them caught the crash, but there was one angle where you could see part of the roadway. Because this crash happened at night, the light from one of the traffic lights was visible on the pavement. Between that and the fact that the camera also captured the sound of the impact, I was able to show that the driver had indeed run a red light when he hit my client. BPD didn’t care enough to ticket him, but his insurance company promptly rescinded their denial of liability, and we were able to proceed with the claim for damages.
Cases like this don’t happen every day, but I have handled enough of them to convince me that any video can make a big difference, even if it doesn’t show exactly what happened. Now that riding with cameras is a practicable option for cyclists in traffic, it’s easy to see the potential benefits for all of us.
The bottom line is that riding with a camera is no longer a niche thing—it's a practical, affordable step that almost any cyclist can take, and the benefits extend beyond just protecting yourself. When you ride with a camera, you become a potential resource for everyone around you. That's a pretty good return on a $50 investment.
Yours,
Josh
PS: If you ride an e-bike and you really want to go all out, you can do what I did on my kid-carrying cargo bike. I wanted to add front and rear cameras that were hard-wired to the bike so that I wouldn’t have to recharge them. Unfortunately, nobody really makes a camera setup like that for e-bikes. They do, however, make such a system for motorcycles. I found one for $75 on Aliexpress, and was able to wire it into an accessory port on the motor, where it gets 12v whenever the bike is turned on. Works just fine and you can hardly see it.
