How to Send Dashcam Footage to Your Insurance Company

Never edit the original

Keep two things: the untouched original exactly as it came off the card, and a copy you can share. Work only from the copy.

Do not trim, crop, brighten, rotate, add captions, or re-encode the original, and do not film your screen with your phone. Every one of those creates a file that no longer matches what the camera wrote, which gives an adjuster a reason to question whether it's authentic. Keep the native format — usually MP4 or MOV.

If your camera's clock is wrong, say so plainly when you submit it. A wrong timestamp is a small problem. A wrong timestamp that you didn't mention is a credibility problem.

How to actually send it

Tell your adjuster early that you have video — it changes how the claim gets handled from the start. Then ask how they want to receive it, because file sizes are the usual snag.

• Claims portal: most major insurers accept uploads directly in the claim, usually under "attach documents" or "add evidence."
• Cloud link: for large files, upload the original to Google Drive or Dropbox and share a view link. Cleanest option for anything over about 100 MB.
• Physical media: some claims centers will take a USB drive in person. Bring the original card as backup and don't leave it with anyone.

Include a short written note with the file: the date and time, the location, and the timestamp range where the incident occurs ("collision at 4:12 into the clip"). If your camera logs GPS separately, include that too.

Describe, don't conclude

Keep your description factual and short. "At 4:12 the silver sedan crosses the center line and strikes the front driver's side of my vehicle" is useful. "The other driver was clearly reckless and is at fault" is not — it's an opinion, it's yours, and it invites an argument you don't need to have.

Don't speculate about speed you can't measure, don't guess at what the other driver was doing inside their car, and don't admit fault. Let the video be the evidence and let the adjuster reach the conclusion.

Your own footage can be used against you

This is the part you won't read on most dashcam websites, and it's the reason to think before you send.

Adjusters review video frame by frame, and they are looking for anything that shifts fault onto you: a few miles over the limit, a rolling stop, following too closely, a glance down at the moment it mattered.

How much that costs you depends entirely on where you crashed. In most states fault is apportioned by percentage, so a small share simply reduces what you recover, and being found more than half responsible bars it. But in five jurisdictions — Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. — being even slightly at fault can bar recovery entirely. There, an adjuster who finds one unflattering second on your video isn't negotiating a discount; they're arguing you get nothing.

South Dakota is its own case: recovery is barred unless your share was slight compared with the other driver's, which its courts have come to treat as somewhere around 30%. At the opposite end, Missouri and Alaska let you recover even when mostly to blame, reduced by your share. See how your state decides fault →

None of that means hide it. Once a claim is likely, deleting relevant footage can be treated as destruction of evidence, which is far worse than an unflattering video. It means: watch the whole clip yourself first, and if there's any chance it cuts against you or the injuries are serious, have a lawyer look at it before you send it anywhere. Your state's bar referral service and free legal aid are listed on the resources page.

In some states, the crash report isn't evidence

People assume the police report settles the argument. In six states it can't, because statute keeps it out of evidence in any case arising from the crash: Iowa (§321.271), Nebraska (60-699, plus case law), North Dakota (39-08-13(8)), Minnesota, Nevada, whose SR-1 is confidential by statute, and Maine (29-A M.R.S. §2251(7)).

Maine's is the broadest of the six. It bars both the investigating officer's report and the driver's own report from any trial, civil or criminal, arising out of the crash — admissible for exactly one purpose, to prove you complied with the reporting requirement. So in Maine the official paperwork establishes that you followed the rules and nothing else about what happened.

In all six, your own photographs and footage carry the weight the report cannot. That is not a sales pitch — it's the practical consequence of a rule most drivers there have never heard of.

Who can obtain a report varies just as widely. Idaho treats crash records as public information — anyone can buy yours for $7, including the other side. Montana won't release a driver's own written report without that driver's signature. Oklahoma keeps reports confidential for 60 days and makes improperly obtaining one a misdemeanor carrying a $2,500 fine. Utah treats department reports as protected and confidential. Worth knowing before you assume anyone can, or can't, pull yours.

Yours versus theirs

These aren't the same request. Your own policy almost certainly contains a cooperation clause requiring you to share relevant information with your insurer.

The other driver's insurer is a different matter — you generally aren't required to hand them your footage voluntarily before any lawsuit is filed, and their adjuster is not working on your behalf. If the other side asks for your video, that's the moment to talk to a lawyer rather than to reply helpfully. (Once litigation begins, footage is normally discoverable either way, which is one more reason not to delete anything.)

If police ask for your footage

This is not the same as an insurer asking, and it's worth slowing down over.

At the scene, an officer asking to see your video is usually trying to work out what happened, and cooperating is often squarely in your interest — especially in a hit-and-run, where the plate your camera caught may be the only lead anyone has. But let me look at it and let me take the card are different requests.

Offer a copy rather than the original memory card. That card is your only untouched source, and once it leaves your hand you've lost control of it. Get the officer's name, agency, and the case number. If they do need the original, ask for a property receipt.

If there's any suggestion that you might be cited or charged — a suspected violation, a serious injury, anything where you're being questioned rather than interviewed — that's the point to stop and speak to a lawyer before handing anything over. Several states run free or capped-fee consultations, and they're listed by state on the resources page.

The rule from the top of this page applies with more force here, not less: don't delete anything. Once an investigation is underway, destroying footage is a far bigger problem than whatever the footage shows.

The microphone is a separate legal question

Recording video of a public road is legal essentially everywhere in the US. Audio is not so simple: some states require the consent of everyone being recorded for a private conversation, and a dashcam microphone running inside your car can capture exactly that.

The practical consequences: an audio track recorded without required consent may be excluded, and in some circumstances recording it at all can be a legal problem of its own — separate from your crash.

Two things worth doing. Find out whether your state requires one-party or all-party consent, and if you carry passengers who don't know they're being recorded, consider simply turning the microphone off. Most dashcams have a setting for it. Video is what wins claims; audio rarely is.

Don't post it publicly

The urge to put a satisfying clip on social media is understandable and it can cost you real money. Your caption becomes a statement about the crash, the comments become context, and anything you wrote in the heat of the moment can be quoted back at you by the other side.

Wait until the claim is closed. The video isn't going anywhere — you saved the original, on purpose, at the top of this page.