Do Car Insurance Companies Offer Discounts for Dash Cams?

Insurers generally don’t offer a dash cam insurance discount but these devices can help you indirectly save money and potentially prevent insurance hikes. These cameras, mounted to your car’s dashboard or windshield, record video evidence of what’s happening around your vehicle, such as potential accidents and other events, that can help prove your innocence if you’re not at fault for a collision.

Keep reading to learn more about dash cam benefits, how they work and ways they can help you save money.

On This Page

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  Does Having a Dash Cam Affect Car Insurance?

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  Which Car Insurance Companies Offer Dash Cam Discounts?

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  What Do Dash Cams Record?

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  What Are the Benefits of a Dash Cam?

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  How Much Does a Dash Cam Cost?

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  When Are Dash Cams Worth It?

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  FAQs

Does Having a Dash Cam Affect Car Insurance?

Dash cams can indirectly affect car insurance rates by helping prevent or reduce insurance hikes after you file a claim. Even if you were not responsible for causing a collision, your insurer will typically insure your premium when you renew your policy, although the rate hike will be higher if you were the at-fault driver.

As a result, having video evidence that can prove the other driver was a fault can help keep your rate as affordable as possible if your insurer does decide to increase it.

Do I Have To Tell Insurance About a Dash Cam in My Car?

Owning a dash cam is optional and doesn’t require informing your insurance company. You can inform your insurance company that you have a dash cam with relevant footage of an incident involving a claim, but that decision is up to you. Remember that dash cam footage presents an unbiased view of an accident, so if the video indicates you may have been driving recklessly or could be at fault for a collision, it may not help your case.

Which Car Insurance Companies Offer Dash Cam Discounts?

No major U.S. insurance companies currently offer direct discounts for owning a dash cam.^[1] While there is no immediate benefit from your carrier, recorded video of an accident is typically welcome by your insurer to help verify a claim and keep your driving record clean, which may result in other discounts from your insurer. For example, in a no-fault accident, your dash cam footage can provide evidence of the other driver’s fault and show your innocence, helping you potentially keep or eventually qualify for a good driver discount if your insurer offers one.

What Do Dash Cams Record?

Dash cams commonly record footage of the road in front and potentially inside your vehicle. Some may also record audio and the time of day the footage is recorded. They may also contain GPS tracking features, marking your location through an app or directly embedded in the footage.

Some dash cams are powered by a cigarette lighter or USB plug-in but some may be hardwired directly into your car. Most begin recording when they receive power from your car and will record until their memory is full before stopping recording or overwriting old footage. Other devices offer live feeds, allowing you to access what the camera sees through an app even when you’re not there.

If your dash cam features a “parked mode,” it will begin recording if it senses any movement or impact to your car while parked, such as if someone tries to break in or does a hit-and-run. There may also be options to place a dash cam on the vehicle's rear to record what’s happening behind you, such as evidence of a rear-end collision or fender bender.

When Do Insurance Companies Request Camera Footage?

Your car insurance company won’t request camera footage but you can typically provide it when filing a claim. Insurance companies regularly rely on surveillance footage to help indicate the accuracy of a claim offering dash camera footage can help clear any confusion.

What Are the Benefits of a Dash Cam?

Dash cams offer a car’s owner several benefits by cataloging and recording video footage of events a driver may have missed. Depending on your circumstances, a “second pair of eyes” can help prove your story after an accident, resolve driver disputes and even show you mistakes you made while driving you otherwise wouldn’t have noticed. Here are just a few examples of dash cam benefits:

Provides Evidence

Video captured by a dash cam is unbiased, so even in events where you’re not at fault but the other driver insists you are, a dash cam can show what actually happened. If the footage supports that you weren’t at fault, you could use it to file an insurance claim. Outside of collisions, dash cam footage can provide evidence of theft, vandalism and other perils covered by your comprehensive coverage to help prove your claim.

Combats Insurance Fraud

Dash cams can help show your innocence if another driver attempts to use you to commit insurance fraud. For example, cars may attempt to lure you into a collision by staging an accident, making a sudden or unnecessary stop and then fraudulently billing your insurance for damages or injury. Dash cam footage can help catch this act and may help with fighting insurance fraud, either as a fraudulent claim or lawsuit.

Helps Improve Your Driving Skills

It may be hard to judge your driving skills when in the moment but by playing your footage back to yourself, you may be able to catch mistakes or errors you made at the time of driving. While this may not have a direct financial benefit, improving your driving skills and avoiding mistakes could help you qualify for good driver discounts.

Monitors Other Drivers

If you’re a parent of a new driver, having a dash cam monitor their driving ability may help you ensure they aren’t making novice mistakes or driving recklessly when you aren’t there to guide them in person. Keeping teens safe behind the wheel is critical, as motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of teen deaths.^[2] Ensuring good driving habits is critical to preventing a fatal crash or injury and can help your child become a safer driver.

Additionally, if you share a car or plan on loaning it to a friend, a dash cam can help you monitor other drivers’ habits and may provide evidence of events if they have an accident behind the wheel that you didn’t witness.

How Much Does a Dash Cam Cost?

Dash cams vary in price depending on their features, with the simplest models generally starting at $50 or less and more advanced dash cams potentially exceeding $500.^[3] Some cameras record at lower quality due to their camera or to save storage space, with higher-quality cameras generally costing more. Additionally, the range of the camera and optional features like night vision can affect the cost.

Storage is one feature affecting price, as dash cams typically don’t feature much internal storage and rely on micro SD cards to save footage. This can be problematic as it can often result in footage overwriting itself without your direction and deleting essential video, requiring making an additional purchase of a replacement card or manually erasing irrelevant footage before the card becomes full. However, some models allow for uploading video footage to the cloud, which removes much of the hassle regarding storage management but may cost an additional fee.

Many dash cams come with safety features, such as GPS tracking, emergency alerts or radar detectors for what’s going on on the road, affecting the price. For example, some Garmin dash cams offer a feature that alerts the driver when they begin drifting into another lane, while some models by Nextbase have an automatic emergency service alert sent out if it senses you’ve been in a serious car accident.^[4][5]

When Are Dash Cams Worth It?

Dash cams can be worth the investment depending on your needs. While a dash cam doesn’t result in direct savings to your insurance premium, if the footage one provides can help you resolve a dispute with another driver or file a successful claim, it could save you more than the cost of the device. Other benefits, such as safety features, may also be worth the cost of a dash cam.