Garmin Drive™

I recently went from volunteer to paid courier for The Red Cross. It’s nothing for me to drive 2 or 3 hundred miles a day! I was just using my iPhone to run my routes. That’s fine for everyday use. No complaints there. But I decided that since I was going to be doing a tremendous amount of driving I would get a dedicated GPS. Yes, most of the big players in GPS are gone. But I still would have gotten Garmin anyway! The extras included in a dedicated GPS really make a difference! Better road condition and construction reports. Faster response time on rerouteing. Just an all around better experience, at least for me! I am not bashing phone based gps at all! Just for ME it works better! I got the 66ex model! It has everything I could possibly need! My only complaint and it’s probably minor is the proprietary way the mount locks into the back of the unit. I could potentially see the lock tab breaking off or wearing out. But then I would just used a standard clamp type phone holder. But so far I am very impressed!

There's lots of dashcams on the market but I didn't expect to find Garmin offering anything in this end of the pool. That's not necessarily a criticism but i do believe you get what you pay for. And in this case what I got was Garmin reliability and simplicity at the price of cheaper offerings. The Dash Cam Mini 2 comes nicely boxed with a full set of cables and mounts. I almost sprung for the parking mode cable and am glad I didn't. This unit works well without it and the power drain is minimal, though I do unplug it when the car is in my garage. It's small. It has voice control. The SD holds enough minutes for me to record long minutes of epic roadside beauty. Okay, that's a gimme for Garmin. But the unit is beautifully versatile and largely unobtrusive. It delivers a crisp picture and the image has always been stable for me. The incident detection feature kicked in twice when traffic suddenly came to a halt. And in the one accident that happened in front of me, I was able to edit and send the footage to the aggrieved party quickly. It's a good little camera.

My camera starts right up every time I get in my car. I have a recent video where someone was not watching what she was doing in a parking lot and drove right out in front of me. I was able to slam on the breaks and miss hitting her. She could barely see over the steering wheel and looked at me like “what’s your problem” and kept making her turn in front of me. It scares me as I could have T boned this lady and really hurt her. Since hitting a motorcycle at night just over a year ago, I have become hyper aware of everything around me. It was at night and I turned in front of a motorcycle I never saw. A black crotch rocket, driver admits to speeding. Driver all in black from helmet down and could not have had any headlights or reflectors as I saw nothing. Thank God the driver has literally no serious injuries except of course road rash, a chipped tooth, and a broken thumb. He was driving suspended. So glad to now have a dashcam. The whole thing would have turned out differently if I had video. I never saw him. If I did, why would I turn?!