The footage board

What happens after you post

1. A person reads your request before anything is published. We remove your email and phone number; the public page shows your first name and last initial only.
2. The day it goes live, we email you the link with three things to do while you wait, because they are the time-sensitive ones: ask businesses facing the road to save their video, request the police report, and share the page locally. Each bounty page has a copy button with ready-made text and a printable flyer with a QR code.
3. Registered dashcam owners in your state get an email about it, nearest metro first. Their addresses are never shown to each other.
4. When someone responds, we forward their note to you unedited. Nobody gets your contact details until you tell us you want an introduction.
5. When you have what you need, or the request goes quiet, we mark it filled or closed. Reply to any of our emails to keep it open.

Post within days, not weeks

Dashcams record in a loop and overwrite their oldest unprotected clips as the card fills, and some brands overwrite even locked clips once the reserved space is full. Business camera systems work the same way: Lorex says its LHB Series recorders overwrite the oldest footage by default when the drive is full, and its overwrite menu starts at one day. A request posted the week of the crash reaches drivers whose cards may still hold it. The details, brand by brand, are in how to save dashcam footage and how to get security camera footage from a business.

Before any reward changes hands

Ask the responder to describe what the clip shows (direction of travel, the time on the clip) and to send one still frame, so you can rule out a clip of the wrong lane or the wrong hour before agreeing to anything. Once you have the file, keep the original exactly as received and work from copies; the original is the version that matters as evidence.