Everything you need to know about bike cameras — how to choose, tips for recording quality footage and what to do if you capture a near miss, close pass or collision

Let’s face it: the standard of driving in the UK is NOT the best. Anyone who’s spent any time on a bike on British roads will have some tales to tell about close passes, and worse. road.cc’s long-running Near Miss of the Day series is up to nearly a thousand videos now, and if we published every one we get sent we’d be into five figures.

More and more people are recording their rides, and most police forces run web portals for you to submit your footage of poor driving and bad behaviour. The head of road safety at Nextbase — the dash cam manufacturer that runs the National Dash Cam Safety Portal used by many police forces — revealed that submissions had increased by 25 per cent since the Highway Code changes of January 2022. If you want to help make the roads safer for everyone by reporting bad driving, here’s our handy guide to the types of cameras you can get, how and where to fit them, and what to do with your footage if you need to report an incident.

Types of cameras

We’re not worried about making cinematic epics here: an on-bike camera’s job is to provide evidence of a close pass or other incident, and to capture the number plates of the vehicles involved. There are many different cameras that can achieve that. We’ve reviewed a stack of them. 

Action cameras

The first type of camera you could consider is an action camera, of which the GoPro is the most well-known. Cameras like the GoPro and DJI Osmo Action are expensive, and useful for much more than dashcam duties. But the internet is full of cheap action cameras and a lot of them are pretty good: fifty quid will buy you one that’ll shoot a decent picture in 4K resolution; check the usual online outlets. You can get an absolutely enormous array of mounts for them too, and many of them are either waterproof out of the box or come with a waterproof enclosure, which is good news for UK commuting conditions. Any camera that you’re buying for this kind of purpose needs to support loop recording: this chops up the footage into shorter clips, and automatically deletes the oldest ones when you start running out of space on your SD card, so you don’t have to worry about file management.

The main downside of action cameras is battery life. Even a cheap one will last a normal town commute, but if you want to regularly record rides over an hour, they don’t really work as a solution.

360 cameras

Also in the action camera family are 360 cameras, Of which the Insta360 family are the best known; that’s what you’ll find on Jeremy Vine’s head. 360 cameras have a lens on both sides, and they can record everything that’s going on, all at once. You can frame the footage however you want after the fact, and that’s great for capturing incidents that a single-lens camera doesn’t pick up. The main downsides are that 360 cameras are pretty expensive, and battery life is, again, quite short. There’s also a fair bit of processing to be done to the video if you want to use it, you can’t just pull the files off and upload them

Dedicated bike cameras

Lastly, you can get a dedicated bike camera. You can get front-facing ones, like the Rider Recall one we recently reviewed, and rear-facing ones that are usually built into some kind of rear light, like the Cycliq Fly 6 Pro. You can get front light ones too. There are twin-camera systems as well, either with two separate cameras like the Innovv K6, or with both cameras built into the same unit, like the Techalogic DC-2. 

Cameras like this tend to record by default in a loop format with the date and time overlaid on the footage, which is useful if you’re submitting it to the police. They often have sensors to detect an impact too, and they can protect any footage they think is associated with an incident by locking the file and putting it in a different folder on the SD card. Many of them, the Rider Recall included, can also run from an external battery for much longer run times. The footage isn’t generally as good as a posh action camera, but for recording incidents out on your rides, it’s good enough.

Where to mount your camera

You can either have your camera on your bike or on yourself, normally on your helmet. Some cameras will only work in one place: a rear light camera goes on your seatpost, a 360 camera or a dual lens camera needs a clear view all round and so it really needs to be on your head. With others you get a choice. An action cam can go anywhere: bars, seatpost, helmet, even on a chest mount. But which approach is best? Well, there are advantages to both.

On your bike the camera is out of the way, and it’s less obvious to drivers, some of whom can get a bit worked up if they think they’ve been filmed doing something daft. If you’re using an external battery for long rides then a bike mounted camera is much easier to set up that way, you can just run the wires along the frame to whatever bag you’re using.

One of the main downsides of mounting your camera on the bike is camera shake. A good action camera will have excellent image stabilisation, but many bike cams have basic stabilisation, or none at all. Without it your bike will do a great job of transferring all the bumps and lumps of crappy UK road surfaces into your footage, which might make number plates hard to read. Having the camera on your head mitigates that quite a bit, and it also means you’re free to point the camera at anything you want, which can be useful. Say some idiot is nudging your bike at the lights: you can just turn round and film it. That doesn’t really work with a bar cam.

On the other hand, the ‘camera hat’ look might not be one you’re comfortable with, and it adds weight to your helmet which can make it less comfortable. There’s been plenty of time and column inches dedicated to discussing whether having a helmet-mounted camera is a safety concern; Michael Schumacher’s skiing crash in 2013 is the highest-profile case in which a camera has been implicated as a factor in a head injury. Independent testing suggests that it’s not really an issue though.

How can you submit video footage to your police force?

In short, it depends where the incident happened. There are 45 territorial police forces operating across the United Kingdom, and their approaches to video evidence gathered by members of the public vary.

Late in 2017, the four police forces operating in Wales launched Operation Snap, unveiling a website that allows people to submit photographic and video evidence and providing a national standard.

And while many English forces — including Gloucestershire as of December — accept Operation Snap submissions, there is no standard operating across the United Kingdom as a whole. Other English forces accept submissions directly via their website or through Nextbase who have a handy interactive map showing how to report to your force.

Police Scotland announced funding for a new National Dashcam Safety Portal in 2022, but the yet to be rolled-out scheme has since been under review and could be axed, prompting a campaign from Cycling UK to save it. Submissions from Scotland presently should go through the Police Scotland Online Reporting Form, similarly in Northern Ireland you can go through the non-emergency online incident reporting.

So, wherever you live, if you are using a camera to film your ride, familiarise yourself with your local police force's policy regarding photographic and video evidence provided by the public. Also bear in mind, too, that the roads you ride on may be part of another force's territory.

Our top tips for capturing and submitting footage

You’ll need good enough footage.

Police don’t specify video quality for submission but in any incident the vehicle number plate needs to be clear. Check your camera can pick up moving number plates. In the case of close passes, the most effective setup is one camera on the front, one on the rear of the bike. It’s worth noting cameras mounted to helmets make it trickier, but not impossible, for police to tell how close drivers are when overtaking.

Ensure the time and date are correct on your camera.

Footage with the date and time overlaid is very helpful, as long as they're correct! This can be resolved later, usually with a statement from the user, but it’s easier for police if it’s right in the first place.

Capture video footage of the incident and the vehicle as best you can.

Capturing not only the incident and the vehicle, but images of the driver, too will help police identify them later on. More tips on mobile phones, below. 

Record, Retreat, Report

Keep cool during the incident, and above all, don’t put yourself in danger. Don't enter into discussions or engage with the offending driver to point out what they have done and what you intend to do; obtain the footage and carry on your journey. Remember, it’s up to police to deal with bad driving, and camera evidence helps them do that. Police will assess both your riding and a driver’s driving later. we've seen cases where riders have been assaulted by motorists after remonstrating with them, which can also in rare cases lead to police rejecting footage, or even referring the cyclist for prosecution for a public order offence.

If there are witnesses, get details

As with any road traffic incident, whether caught on film or not, having independent witnesses is very helpful, and is even required by some forces. Get the full name and contact details for anyone who witnessed the incident.

Submit footage early – worry about details later.

Police need to send a notice of intended prosecution to vehicle owners within 14 days of the incident, so if you’ve caught something on camera there isn’t a day to waste. Make sure to keep the full footage in case it’s needed later.

Write a good statement with your camera footage

Your statement is submitted at the same time as the footage. Keep to the facts, rather than opinion. Your statement needs to cover the following:

a. What the driver did
b. Whether they were moving/stationary at the time
c. If they were in traffic
d. Whether it was at a junction
e. What the road conditions were

Mobile phone offences need more detail of the driver and what they're doing

For mobile phone offences try to capture:

a. The device screen, if it is illuminated
b. If the device is being held to the driver’s face and they can be seen talking
c. Texting/fingers or thumb moving across the screen
d. Looking down at the device, rather than the road ahead – whether stationary or moving
e. The length of time the driver is using the device

Keep all of the footage you have of the incident.

Once submitted, police will consider the manner of driving and cycling of ALL involved in the incident, and may ask you for the full footage, should the matter proceed to court. They usually need the incident itself, and a minute of footage either side.  

Is it worth the time and faff to actually report bad driving? Well, the numbers say yes: rates vary from force to force, but for all the forces that have published stats, over half of reported incidents (and sometimes a lot more) result in action of some kind. That can be a letter, a notice of intended prosecution, a fine, or a requirement to attend a course. The worst passes certainly do get prosecuted, so if you capture bad driving it *is* worth your time to report it. If you’re thinking of getting a camera, check out the road.cc camera reviews on the site.

Don't forget: Enjoy the ride!

We take up cycling because it’s convenient, fun, healthy and saves us money. Most drivers want to do the right thing and drive safely. Don’t let a few bad eggs ruin your rides.

Includes additional reporting by Laura Laker and Dave Atkinson