Accidents are an occupational hazards for fleets – especially with high mileage around-town vehicles such as delivery vans and reps’ cars.
To protect yourself and your drivers Navman offers a range of MiVue safety cameras. These are portable units that attach to the inside of the car windscreen via a suction mount (recommended location is next to the rear view mirror. While switched on it continuously records a wide angle view of the road ahead.
Recording starts and stops automatically when the car is started or stopped, and that journey is stored as a file. It will fill up the Micro SD memory card (which you need to supply-  8GB is recommended size) and overwrites the oldest footage.
Even smarter than that, if the G sensor in the unit detects what it regards as an accident, or if the GPS indicates excess speed, it automatically treats the relevant recording as an event, and saves it in a secure location under the emergency category where it won’t get overwritten. The driver can also prompt an event recording by pressing the OK key. The camera can also be manually started and stopped.
There are three units in the Mivue range. W we tested the top-of-the-line MiVue 388, which has 1080p HD resolution and a built-in GPS to allow location, direction and speed to be recorded. The camera sensor is five megapixels, and there is a 2.4 inch screen. It also has a has parking mode which will record an image if there is an impact while parked.
The unit is small and easy to mount and operate, (although tucking the cord out of the way takes a bit of time), but this can then be left in place unless you are moving the unit between vehicles.
The 358 is the mid-spec model with 1080p HD resolution, a 120 degree lens, and parking mode, and it has the same screen and sensor as the 388, but does not have the built-in GPS for location and speed recording.
The final entry level model is the 338. This has 720p HD recording and a smaller 2 inch screen, and it misses out on the parking mode and GPS.
We recorded several trips on the 388 and the playback quality is good – you can view one of the recordings at http://youtu.be/rhZffggYZ2M
The Mivue camera could provide some worthwhile peace of mind in an accident/insurance claim situation. The 338 has a typical retail around the $169 point whilst the 358 is $269 and the 388 $349.