Dashcam Video, Phone Records and Black Box Data: Proving a Car Accident Claim

Most crash claims used to come down to two drivers telling different stories. More and more, there is a recording. This page explains what digital evidence exists after a collision in Nebraska, who holds it, whether it can be used in court, how a lawyer gets it, and what you should do in the first week so that it still exists when you need it. Where the law is in a statute, a court rule or a federal regulation, I quote it and link to it.

What Digital Evidence Exists After a Car Accident?

Is It Legal to Use a Dashcam in Nebraska?

Yes. No Nebraska statute prohibits a dashcam. Two laws affect how you use one.

• Where you mount it. It is unlawful to drive “with any object placed or hung in or upon the motor vehicle … in such a manner as to significantly and materially obstruct or interfere with the view of the operator through the windshield” (Neb. Rev. Stat. § 60-6,256). A small camera behind the mirror is not a problem; one in the middle of your sight line can be. The fine starts at $50, and an officer can enforce it only after stopping you for something else.
• Recording sound. Nebraska is a one-party consent state. It is not unlawful to record a conversation “when such person is a party to the communication or when one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent” (§ 86-290). A dashcam that records the conversations in your own car, with you in them, is lawful.

Iowa is the same on both points. Its recording statute contains the same one-party consent rule (Iowa Code § 808B.2), and its windshield statute simply requires that the windows “permit clear vision.”

Can Dashcam Video Be Used as Evidence in a Nebraska Injury Case?

Yes, if it is relevant and it is authenticated. Authentication is a low bar. The rule requires only “evidence sufficient to support a finding that the matter in question is what its proponent claims” (§ 27-901). The Nebraska Supreme Court has explained that there are two ways to meet it:

• A witness vouches for it. Someone who saw the events testifies that the video “is a correct and accurate representation of facts that the witness personally observed.” If your own dashcam recorded the crash, that witness is you.
• The recording speaks for itself. Under what the court calls the “silent witness” theory, a recording “may draw its verification not from any witness who has actually viewed the scene portrayed, but from other evidence which supports the reliability of the photographic product.” That is how a gas station’s security video comes in when nobody was watching the monitor.

The person who filmed it does not have to testify, and the proof does not have to be conclusive (State v. Anglemyer, 269 Neb. 237 (2005)). A judge can still keep video out if its value “is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury” (§ 27-403).

Three practical rules for your own video

• Save the original file, untouched. Do not trim it, add captions or run it through an editing app. Copy the whole file, including the minutes before and after.
• Do not post it. Video on social media gets picked apart, and comments you make about it become evidence too.
• Remember it records you as well. Your speed, your following distance and what you said in the car are all on it. Show it to your lawyer before you show it to an insurance adjuster.

Texting and Driving: What the Law Prohibits

In Nebraska, “no person shall use a handheld wireless communication device to read a written communication, manually type a written communication, or send a written communication while operating a motor vehicle which is in motion” (§ 60-6,179.01). The fines are $200, $300 and $500, with three points on the license. But enforcement “shall be accomplished only as a secondary action,” which means an officer cannot stop a driver for texting alone. Tickets are uncommon, even at crash scenes.

Commercial drivers are held to a stricter rule. Federal regulations provide that “no driver shall engage in texting while driving” and “no driver shall use a hand-held mobile telephone while driving a CMV,” and the trucking company may not allow it either (49 C.F.R. §§ 392.80, 392.82).

Iowa went further. Since 2025 an Iowa driver “shall not use an electronic device while driving a motor vehicle” unless it is in “a voice-activated or hands-free mode,” and “use” includes “holding, viewing, or manipulating” the device (Iowa Code § 321.276). The warning period ended January 1, 2026.

You do not need a ticket to prove distraction

A civil case asks whether the driver used reasonable care, not whether the driver was cited. The Nebraska Supreme Court has said that “the violation of a regulation or statute is not negligence per se, but may be evidence of negligence to be considered with all the other evidence in the case” (Scheele v. Rains, 292 Neb. 974 (2016)). A texting violation proved through phone records is evidence the jury weighs, whether or not an officer wrote a citation. I cover how these cases are built in distracted driving accidents in Nebraska.

How Do You Get the Other Driver’s Phone Records?

Not by asking. A wireless carrier will not give a stranger someone else’s records, and the other driver’s insurance company has no reason to volunteer them. The tools that reach them only exist once a lawsuit is filed.

• A request to the driver. After suit is filed, a party may require another party to produce “any designated documents or electronically stored information — including writings, drawings, graphs, charts, photographs, sound recordings, images, and other data” in that party’s “possession, custody, or control,” and to permit the requesting party to “inspect, copy, test, or sample” it (Neb. Ct. R. Disc. § 6-334). That reaches the driver’s own phone bills and, where justified, the phone. A response is due in 30 days.
• A subpoena to the carrier. A lawyer may issue a subpoena commanding someone who is not a party to the case to produce records, after giving every other party at least 14 days’ written notice (§ 6-334(A)).
• The limit: no message content. Federal law provides that a carrier “shall not knowingly divulge to any person or entity the contents of a communication.” What it may disclose is “a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber” that does not include the contents (18 U.S.C. § 2702). The records show activity on the account. They do not show what a text said.

This is one reason some cases have to be filed rather than settled early: an insurer that denies its driver was on the phone cannot be tested on it until the records can be compelled.

The “Black Box”: What an Event Data Recorder Captures

Most late-model cars and pickups have an event data recorder. Federal regulations define it as a function that “records the vehicle’s dynamic time-series data during the time period just prior to a crash event … or during a crash event,” and they standardize what it must capture in vehicles built since September 1, 2012 (49 C.F.R. Part 563). The required data includes:

• vehicle speed;
• accelerator or throttle position;
• whether the brake was applied;
• the change in velocity during the impact, which measures how hard the crash was;
• whether the driver’s seat belt was buckled; and
• air bag deployment timing.

Three facts about this data are widely misunderstood.

• It is a few seconds, not a trip log. In most vehicles on the road today the recorder keeps five seconds of pre-crash data at two samples per second. A 2024 federal rule extends that to 20 seconds at ten samples per second, but in May 2026 the agency delayed the schedule: the longer recording phases in beginning September 1, 2028 and applies to all new vehicles on September 1, 2031.
• It only records in a crash. The required owner’s manual statement says data “are recorded by your vehicle only if a non-trivial crash situation occurs; no data are recorded by the EDR under normal driving conditions.” It has no audio or video.
• The data belongs to the vehicle’s owner. Under the federal Driver Privacy Act of 2015, recorder data “is the property of the owner, or, in the case of a leased vehicle, the lessee,” and it may not be accessed by anyone else unless a court “authorizes the retrieval of the data” or the owner gives “written, electronic, or recorded audio consent.”

The practical consequence runs both directions. The data in your car is yours, and it can prove you were going the speed limit and braking. But it stays in the car. If a totaled vehicle is released to an insurer and sold for salvage before the data is downloaded, the proof goes with it. The data in the other driver’s car requires that driver’s consent or a court order, which again means a lawsuit, and a demand to preserve the vehicle in the meantime.

Commercial trucks carry more

A semi adds an electronic logging device recording the driver’s hours, and often fleet cameras and tracking data. Federal rules require a carrier to keep its drivers’ duty records and supporting documents only “for a period of not less than 6 months,” and a backup of the electronic log data for six months (49 C.F.R. §§ 395.8, 395.22). After that, it can lawfully be gone. See my truck accident page.

Traffic Cameras, Police Video and Public Records

• Highway cameras do not keep footage. The Nebraska Department of Transportation’s policy states that its cameras “are for transportation purposes only” and that “camera images are not archived.” The camera you can see over the interstate will almost never produce a recording of your crash.
• Police body cameras. Nebraska law requires that body camera recordings “be retained for a minimum period of ninety days from the date of recording,” and longer “upon notice to the law enforcement agency of a criminal or civil court proceeding in which the recording may have evidentiary value” (§ 81-1454). Notice inside that window matters.
• Public records requests. A written request for a public record must be answered “as soon as is practicable and without delay, but not more than four business days after actual receipt of the request” (§ 84-712). There is an important exception: records that are part of a law enforcement investigation “may be withheld from the public,” so video from an open investigation may not be released until it closes or a subpoena requires it.
• Private cameras. A store, a bank or a homeowner with a doorbell camera has no legal duty to keep video for a stranger. Asking promptly and politely, and following with a written preservation request, is what works.

Evidence Disappears: Preservation Letters and Spoliation

A preservation letter tells the person holding evidence that a claim is coming and that the evidence must be kept. It is not a formality. Nebraska’s discovery rules, amended effective January 1, 2025, now address lost electronic evidence directly. If electronically stored information “that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it,” the court may order measures to cure the harm, and if the party “acted with the intent to deprive another party of the information’s use,” the court may instruct the jury to presume the lost information was unfavorable, or even enter judgment (Neb. Ct. R. Disc. § 6-337(e)). The rule’s official comment lists “sending or receiving a demand or a preservation letter” as an event that may trigger the duty to preserve.

The timing matters because of how Nebraska courts treat destroyed evidence generally. The Supreme Court has held that an unfavorable inference arises “only where the spoliation or destruction was intentional and indicates fraud and a desire to suppress the truth, and it does not arise where the destruction was a matter of routine with no fraudulent intent” (Richter v. City of Omaha, 273 Neb. 281 (2007)). A camera system that recorded over your crash in the ordinary course, before anyone asked for the video, leaves you with nothing: no video and no remedy. A letter that arrives first changes that.

Your Phone and Your Accounts Are Evidence Too

Everything above applies to you. The defense can request your phone records, your dashcam files and your social media posts under the same rule, and it will, because under Nebraska’s comparative negligence law any fault it can put on you reduces what it pays, and a claimant found half or more at fault recovers nothing. Two rules follow.

• Do not delete anything. The duty to preserve applies to an injured person who expects to make a claim just as it applies to a defendant. Deleting posts, messages or video after a crash can be treated as destroying evidence.
• Do not create new evidence against yourself. Photos and comments posted during a claim are read by the insurer. So is anything you say in a recorded statement.

What to Do in the First Week

• Pull the memory card. If you have a dashcam, remove the card or save the file before you drive again.
• Ask witnesses about their cameras. Get the name and number of anyone who stopped, and ask whether their vehicle has a dashcam.
• Walk the scene for cameras and write down every business and house with one facing the road. Ask the same day that the video be saved. Crashes at signals are where this matters most; see my page on Omaha’s most dangerous intersections.
• Do not release your vehicle for salvage, and do not authorize repairs, until you know whether its data needs to be downloaded.
• Tell the officer if you saw the other driver on a phone. It goes in the report even if no ticket is written.
• Call a lawyer early. Preservation letters to the other driver, the insurer, a trucking company and nearby businesses are most useful in the first days. The full checklist is in what to do after a car accident in Nebraska.

Statutes, court rules and federal regulations quoted on this page were read at their official sources on October 3, 2026. This page is general information, not legal advice about your situation.

Your Attorney

Frank Younes

Every page on this site is written by Frank Younes, a Nebraska trial attorney with a published record of verdicts and settlements, selection to the National Trial Lawyers Top 100, and a practice that covers every county in Nebraska and Iowa. No case is handed to an associate — the lawyer you read here is the lawyer who works your case.

More about Frank → · Free consultation: (402) 378-9208

Frequently Asked Questions

Are dashcams legal in Nebraska?

Yes. A dashcam may not significantly and materially obstruct the driver’s view through the windshield, and because Nebraska is a one-party consent state, it may record conversations you are part of.

Can dashcam footage be used in court in Nebraska?

Yes. It must be relevant and authenticated, which requires only evidence sufficient to support a finding that the video is what it is claimed to be. A witness can vouch for it, or other evidence can establish its reliability.

Can my lawyer get the other driver’s cell phone records?

Yes, after a lawsuit is filed, by a request to the driver and a subpoena to the wireless carrier. The carrier’s records do not include the content of text messages.

What does a car’s black box record?

Speed, throttle, braking, seat belt use, air bag deployment and the force of the impact, for a few seconds before and during a crash. It does not record audio, video or ordinary driving.

Who owns the black box data?

The vehicle’s owner or lessee, under federal law. Anyone else needs the owner’s consent or a court order.

How long is traffic camera or surveillance video kept?

Nebraska highway camera images are not archived at all. Police body camera video must be kept at least 90 days. No Nebraska law requires a private business to keep its video.

Is texting while driving automatically negligence in Nebraska?

No. A statute violation is evidence of negligence that the jury weighs with the other evidence, and it can be proved without a ticket.