Dashcams are incredibly useful for driving instructors because they are valuable for coaching better by providing proof of what happened during every lesson, and show clients and regulators that they run an honest school. When you have consistent footage of your driving sessions, it creates an instruction record that eliminates false claims and hearsay.
When you’re teaching someone to drive, communication is everything. If you told your student to slow down or make that turn and they didn’t register the instruction, the car might suffer damage. Who’s going to pay? Who was actually at fault?
Dash cams provide fraud protection and accident evidence for every lesson trip, making it a valuable tool in any driving school. Here’s everything you need to know about using a dashcam for the benefit of your driving instructor practice.
Yes, dashcams prove useful by monitoring real-time driver behavior and providing voice alerts during unsafe transport activities. They also give the instructor proof if something goes wrong during the lesson, and help the instructor provide relevant feedback to students after every lesson.
Modern dashcams are fitted with AI technology that identifies driving behaviour as it happens. This means driving instructors have an onboard partner during the lesson that affirms their guidance and enforces safer driving habits in the mind of the learner.
This footage of dashcams serves to further solidify safer behaviour by combining instructor notes and dash cam data that’s easy to read & understand.
Driving lessons come with risks because you have someone who isn’t always accustomed to the operation of a vehicle. This poses some challenges for driving instructors who are accurately providing instruction—because it’s not always received or adhered to.
If something does go wrong during the lesson, the “he-said-she-said” cycle starts. But with indisputable footage, you maintain legal safety during every lesson.
Dash cam footage that’s collected over time is extremely useful to driving instructors as it creates an informal ‘syllabus’ for new students. As your archive grows, your reputation as an effective driving teacher will grow too.
This results in stronger trust and more students signing up for your driver training services.
Before implementing dashcams into your driving school, there are some vehicle tracking and privacy regulations for driving schools. Rules you should know about that relate to POPIA, installation and footage management. By partnering with a reliable dash cam provider, you can bypass many of these concerns, so it’s good to know about them before you choose your provider.
AI dashcams record the road ahead, but dual view cameras also record inside the cabin of the car, and should therefore comply with the POPI Act. This means you need to take extra care of how the footage is used within your driver school.
Learners (and in some cases, parents or guardians) should be made aware that recording (both video & audio) is taking place. Footage of learners under the age of 18 should be stored securely, restricted to authorised staff only, and deleted as soon as it's no longer needed for training or legal purposes.
Don’t make the following mistakes when using a dash cam for your driving school:
Remember that Cartrack offers special rates for fleet dashcams, meaning you can benefit from installing multiple units in your cars if you have more than one vehicle used for driver training. If you start from one dashcam and move to multiple units, speak to our fleet consultants to get a better rate and additional software perks.
Knowing how to utilise the dashcam and the footage is necessary to get the most out of yours. As a driving instructor, you might want to learn how your dash cam functions and how footage can be used to grow your school or business.
Cartrack’s dashcam footage is easy to retrieve using the adjoining app that comes with our service & hardware. Simply select a time stamp with the date and download the footage for future use in your school. We provide a standard baseline 500MB footage cap per month (depending on your package), but you can always purchase more data if you want longer or more footage.
Dashcams provide a superior experience for students, but despite this, most driving instructors are yet to utilise this helpful technology into their training. By implementing dash camera technology into your driving school, you’ll stand out as an effective and forwarded-thinking instructor among your competition.
Choose the right provider for your driving school dash cam. Check in with Cartrack today and we’ll schedule a demo for you on how our technology can enhance the experience of your students and improve your instructor skills.
As a dash cam provider in the road transport industry for over two decades, we’ve got you covered with all the legal and installation matters related to vehicle cameras and fleet dash cams for your driving school.
Should driving instructors in South Africa invest in dashcams for their schools, and if so, how can they get the most out of this driver safety technology?
