Dash Cam Owners Australia (DCOA) regularly release videos of road incidents that have been supplied to them by motorists across the country.

In the DCOA’s latest compilation video, Bathurst features twice with an accident and a near-miss occurring just metres away from each other.

In once video a motorcycle’s dash cam captures an accident with a utility as it leaves the Bunnings complex car park to turn right onto Stockland Drive.

Mr Irvine said that while the utility should have given way, the dash cam does not catch everything.

“What we don’t see in the footage is whether there was anything obscuring the driver’s vision, or other factors that may have led to the driver simply not seeing the motorcycle,” he said.

“We are also not privy to the speed at which the motorcycle was travelling. From the footage available, I would suggest that he may have been travelling a little fast for the traffic environment.

“This doesn’t make what happened to him right or fair, but as a motorcyclist myself I never trust other road users to follow every rule in the book.”

The second Bathurst incident was a near-miss captured on a truck’s dash cam as it travels west on the Great Western Highway at the intersection of Stockland Road.

“Clearly the grey car [that turns in front of the truck] is in the wrong, having misread the traffic signals or inexplicably having not seen the truck,” Mr Irvine said.

Despite the good dash cam footage can do in prosecutions, he said it can influence a driver’s behaviour.

“Anecdotal evidence suggests that drivers who know they’re likely to be proven right won’t back off in a situation where a crash is likely,” Mr Irvine said.

“There’s dozens of examples in the video you sent me where the camera car could have taken steps to prevent or minimise a crash, but they appear not to.”

Mr Irvine said dash cams can encourage some motorists to turn into vigilantes on the road.

“[Drivers] trawl around town looking for a driver to bait, then proudly captures footage of the ‘offender’ aggressively tailgating or engaging in some other high-risk behaviour,” he said.