What is Impact & Motion Detection in Dash Cams?

Impact detection is a feature in dash cams that are built with a G-sensor — an accelerometer that registers information based on the amount of force delivered when an impact is detected by your camera. Through the settings, users can adjust the sensitivity of the G-sensor to ensure that it only records significant impacts.

If you’re curious about how impact detection works, when a predetermined value is reached by the G-sensor, the dash cam footage automatically gets saved and relocated to a special folder for safekeeping, bookmarked for later.

This gives you peace of mind, knowing that when an accident or collision happens, files are protected as guaranteed evidence, and easy to find afterwards.

While impact detection is triggered by impact, motion detection, uses video sensor analysis algorithms to distinguish between relevant motions. This will be able to determine which motion footage is far off in the background, or nearby your car, ensuring the close ones are saved and recorded.

Compared to impact detection, motion detection works more as a silent witness that documents any suspicious behaviour around the vicinity of your vehicle, specifically while parked. Impact detection is best for scenarios where your vehicle is hit, and motion detection works best in the events of theft, vandalism, or keying.

Thinkware dash cams have some of the best parking mode features. They provide buffered parking mode, which has the ability to record up to 5-10 seconds leading up to the recording.

When you leave your car unattended, activating the parking mode feature of your dash cam safeguards your vehicle with another layer of protection.

Impact and Motion detection provides drivers the peace of mind that whether it’s a hit-and-run, a thief trying to break in or pass by, the dash cam will record and save the evidence, all organized in their respective folders. This gives users the convenience of searching for the files they need when the situation calls for it.

Motion detection, of course, will only pick up recordings of what passes in front of the camera, while impact detection will ensure even if there is an impact to the side of the vehicle, the camera is wide awake to capture even the smallest details that pass by.

Beyond impact and motion detection, another must-have parking mode feature is buffered recording. While knowing what happened after the incident is important, it’s also important to see the incident itself, and what caused it.

In buffered parking mode, dashcams record a video sequence (typically starting 15 seconds before the event and finishing 30 seconds after the event) so you get the full picture of the event. Just like impact and motion detection, files captured during buffered recording get automatically saved into the micro SD card when an event is detected. Curious about other features or factors for parking mode? Check out our parking mode page here.

Modern dash cams from Thinkware, BlackVue, and VIOFO are equipped with these recording features. However, Thinkware has the most advanced parking mode settings, which also includes cutting-edge surveillance features such as Energy Saving Parking Mode and Smart Parking Mode, all present in the 4K Thinkware U3000, 2K Thinkware Q1000, and the Full HD Thinkware F70 Pro.