
Garmin Dash Cam 55
Accelerometer, GPS receiver, WQHD
Garmin Dash Cam 55
Accelerometer, GPS receiver, WQHD
Since you can freely buy these cams, they are therefore not prohibited for use in Switzerland, correct?
To my knowledge, no one has yet been fined in Switzerland for the mere presence of a dashcam. However, there are court decisions in which such recordings were explicitly NOT accepted as evidence because they were de facto unlawfully made. This was especially true when the recordings were used to report someone.
This assumption is not entirely correct. It depends on what the dashcam is intended for. If the dashcam is installed in the vehicle in order to report any serious traffic offences to the police later or to have a video evidence in case of an accident, the use of dashcams is sensitive from a data protection point of view. As a rule, dashcams violate personal rights, since data of all persons in the recording area are recorded indiscriminately. Moreover, it is not recognisable to them that they are being filmed. At the moment we are in a legal grey area. There are already court decisions in various cantons, but they have always turned out somewhat differently. It now remains to be decided by the Federal Supreme Court whether and in what form the use of a dashcam is permissible and how any videos of evidence may be used in court.
In a couple of cases such video recordings helped me with police and insurance - of course without going to a court. I understand storing recorded videos is a particular issue here. Nowadays nobody is guaranteed that there is no filming or processing with car manufacturers equipping their cars with connected/networked or even collision avoidance systems.