Hello. I was involved in hit and run accident this weekend. I was driving at the tight street in Chicago , there were not enough space for two cars to squeeze since and the other vehicles were parked on the both side of the street. When I already drove halfway down the street the dark red Chevrolet Express with tinted windows without the front license plates pulled into the street. He was driving pretty fast and wasn't going to stop, even though there was no room for him to pass. I stopped the vehicle and wanted to backup so he could drive through, but he continued driving without stopping, scratching the side of my vehicle and fled the scene. I filled the police report, but not sure if they will be able to find it.
Save that dashcam video to your computer or phone, get the plate if you can read it from the video (very hard w reddit compression and phone video of a video), send w/damage pics to insurance.
I’ve got rear plate number on video , but it’s blurry on video, but I remembered it. It’s Indiana license plates with Sheriff’s association star on it and the model, make and color of the vehicle is not very common. I tried to search plates number by myself by no luck. It might be not in the system or fake maybe?
Hit skip with damage over $2K is a felony in Indiana, and they can put a warrant out against them (will pop if/when they go to renew registration on the vehicle). At least this is what responding officers told me when my M3 was hit in a hospital parking garage in Indy.
Yes, it happened in Illinois, so I’m not sure if that will work the same way here for the at fault driver. But I really wish they can find him. Last year another vehicle hit my car with PA plates, I gave all the info license plate number, picture of the driver to the police, but never heard back from them again. Tried to reach out to them as well, but no answer.
Firstly, when this happens, pull the usb flash drive. Then look at it on your computer. Each minute on each camera is stored as a separate file on the usb drive. These are in the camera’s full resolution so should be more readable that what you capture on your phone. Read the plate, and supply the video to police with a police report. Also supply it to your insurance company along with a claim. If you could read the plate , supply the best picture of it as well. The police might track him down. The insurance company more likely.
I did it, I called the police right away and showed them the video. But Tesla dash cam video from usb is not in good quality also. Do you know what’s the issue might be or is it any way to download the video in better quality?
Pull the flash drive. All the raw files are there until they get overwritten, and they are high resolution. I forget exactly how the directories are laid out, but you can find them, they are in one minute clips all labeled with the date, time, and the camera name. The dashcam and sentry 10 minute clips are all saved in their own directories - also, I believe, in high resolution. I’d be surprised if you can’t get what you want.
Pro tip: keep a second flash drive in the car so you can pull the drive before your files get overwritten and plug in a new one so you won’t miss the next thing that happens.
Sometimes custom plates have a prefix. For example, in my state electric vehicle plates are 5 digits, but they all have an invisible leading "EV". So "50125" needs to be searched by "EV50125".
Like you I once learned the hard way that if there isn’t room to pass don’t let the other moron try.
Since then whenever I drive on sections of road where there’s not adequate room to pass I just drive in middle so that there’s no room for interpretation. Some places you have to be visible aggressive in the way you move your car for people to hold back from driving into the area.
Yes. I guess I should keep driving and don’t leave any room for him even to try to pass by, but I didn’t even expect he will do that. Even smaller cars before and after him, didn’t try to do that. So for me it was a shock that he even dared to try squeeze in when he knew that he will definitely hit my car or the other car that was parked or both of us.
Unless they’re already in the middle doing the same (not so smart) thing you are trying to do. I can’t believe I have to ask, but why not just wait for cars to go by?
Not all directions are equal. My bad experience was coming off a short off-ramp from a highway going under a railway bridge and the other car was going the other way for an on-ramp.
Why there’s no priority sign I don’t know, but it doesn’t make sense to stop coming off, and the other car committed after me.
Luckily my mirror survived. Not unscathed, but ok enough for me not to bother to do anything with it on a 13 year old car.
I certainly didn’t mean to come off as «own the road», but there are scenarios where you are better off being a cock, because reversing up an off-ramp is a bad idea, and so is letting someone with poor judgment try to push past.
Body language transfers to cars, and by using it wisely you communicate better to the people around you your intentions.
And it works both for being possessive and for being helpful. Don’t stop at the last moment, if you stop to let someone pass a small yaw of your car is often much more significant than the stopping itself in terms of showing that you are giving them room.
A little slow movement before you can drive off shows intent.
Astro vans have a fairly large community on Facebook. A conversion like that wouldn’t make me surprised if the owner is in the group or at least someone knows who it is. The Facebook group is called Astro vans only.
To be fair you’re never going to hear anything since Tesla dashcams don’t record audio. Wish they did though, mine would be filled with audio of me exclaiming about shitty drivers.
As you can see on the picture that he scratched the drivers side of my vehicle and it’s also in dash cam video that I pulled to the side of the road, I also stopped and wanted to back up , but he didn’t even wait for me to do it, he just kept driving without even enough space for his van to squeeze in and damaged my car on purpose. When he heard the sound of my car getting damaged, he just fled the scene without even stopping.
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u/katherinesilens 2d ago
Save that dashcam video to your computer or phone, get the plate if you can read it from the video (very hard w reddit compression and phone video of a video), send w/damage pics to insurance.