I’ve been running a dashcam for the past year now, ever since receiving the Papago GoSafe 272. While that was a great unit, it took up quite a bit of windshield space with its large suction cup mount. Last January, I received the new GoSafe 388, which is a much smaller unit and included a tiny windshield mount to boot. The overall footprint was more than half the size of my original one and needless to say, I’m using this right now, but why? I’ve talked about why I think we should all run dashcams in the past on various posts, but do we really need to? Is it worth the money to run one if you never get into any accidents? My answer to that is yes and I’ll explain why.
This post will mostly center around the Papago GoSafe 388 since that’s what I’m using. For many drivers, I think you just go about your day not ever realizing the kind of things that could happen to you because you think that they never will. You might be the greatest driver in the world with a flawless record, but that doesn’t mean every other driver out there is like you. In fact, I’m willing to bet that in your day-to-day commute, you probably passed a few drivers out there with the worst possible driving record in history. Well, those are the type of people the GoSafe 388 was made for and why you need one in your car.
For the most part, my Papago GoSafe 388 sits out of the way, on my windshield without a care in the world. It sits there recording my daily commute, my boring, uneventful, daily commute that wouldn’t even get one solid hit on Youtube. I never capture moments like escaped cows running down the highway or runaway speeding garbage trucks. All I even see are red lights from the back of cars and traffic so heavy you’d think I were in a parking lot. But I’m fine with that because the real reason I have a dashcam is to capture that one moment when some butt hole decides that my car doesn’t have enough dents and rams his car into mine. That’s why I use a dashcam. Using a dashcam is pretty much the same reason as why you have health insurance or life insurance. As much as you think nothing might happen to you, there’s always that possibility that something will happen and it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
With that said, you can use any type of dashcam out there for the same results, but my experiences so far have been with Papago and their excellent GoSafe series of dashcams. If you want something small and out of the way that provides full 1080p HD recording with sound, then the GoSafe 388 just might be for you. Like I stated above, the GoSafe 388 is tiny, has a tiny mount to go along with it, and also includes an 8gb Micro SD card for recording. It’s also very easy to use. Once it’s mounted in your car, that’s it. You basically can forget about it until you need to retrieve video from it. It will power up when you start your car and power down when you leave. It can also automatically start recording again if it detects any motion vibrations. There’s actually various settings you can mess with to adjust when you want it to turn on and off.
If you’re worried about deleting old videos, don’t be. The GoSafe 388 actually goes on a loop and will overwrite any old files if it runs out of space. That again means that for the most part, you just kind of use this thing and forget about it until you really need it. With a huge memory card, it would take a while before it started doing this although it also depends on how long most of your commutes are. Just know that if you get into an accident, at least that file will be there for you to grab later on.
With that said, do you need a dashcam? Well, if you just bought one to capture the type of stuff you see in Youtube videos, probably not. You’ll most likely be disappointed by how boring your drive really is. But if you’re the type who would rather be safe than sorry and want some type of insurance just in case someone isn’t being entirely honest with the cops in a fender bender that you’re involved with, at least you got evidence to shut them down. Nothing is more fun than calling out a liar and with video handy, you can do that.
