Why rideshare drivers are using their phones instead of dashcams
A Lyft driver messaged us at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday. He'd had a dispute with a passenger over a damaged seat. The driver had purchased a £200 dashcam six months earlier and never installed it; it was still in his glovebox. He'd filed a claim, lost it, and wanted to know if Hawk could help him prepare for the small-claims court hearing. The answer was yes. But it made me wonder how many drivers were carrying unused hardware when the answer was already in their pocket.
The hardware dashcam problem nobody talks about
Dedicated dashcams are good at one thing: recording video. But they're terrible at being part of your actual life. They require installation, subscription fees, cloud storage plans, and a learning curve most drivers never complete. I've heard from dozens of rideshare drivers over the past year. Almost all of them own a dashcam. Almost none of them use it regularly.
The friction is real. You buy the device, mount it, realise the wiring is a mess, or the subscription costs more than you expected, or the footage is stuck on an SD card and you don't know how to export it when you need it. By the time something happens (a bump, a dispute, an accusation), the camera is a paperweight.
Hawk takes the opposite approach. Your phone is already on the dashboard. It's already connected to the internet. It's already something you know how to use. The app records continuously in the background. When you need evidence, one tap exports everything as a court-ready ZIP file with SHA-256 integrity hashes on every clip. No subscription required to start. No SD card. No mystery cables.
Court-ready evidence, not just footage
The Lyft driver I mentioned earlier asked one question: "Will this hold up in court?" That question changed how we built Hawk.
Every clip written by Hawk carries a SHA-256 integrity hash. It's cryptographic proof that the video hasn't been tampered with. When you export a dispute, the ZIP includes a manifest file with hashes for every clip, GPS coordinates, speed overlays, and timestamp data. That's not just a video file; that's evidence. We've had drivers use Hawk exports in small-claims court, insurance disputes, and police reports. One Rideshare Pro user submitted a clip to the NDSP (National Dash Cam Safety Portal) and later told us it was cited in a police investigation.
The Evidence Locker is built the same way. Once you lock a clip with biometric authentication (fingerprint, Face ID), it's protected. You control who sees it and when. iCloud sync is optional; if you're using Rideshare Pro, your locked clips sync to your own iCloud account, not ours. We never hold your evidence. You do.
The shift and the cabin: rideshare specific
Free Hawk works for any driver. But rideshare drivers have different needs. A delivery driver might use Hawk for one route per day. A Lyft driver does five, ten, sometimes fifteen trips. Each trip has a different passenger, different route, potentially different liability.
Rideshare Pro adds Shift Mode. You press a button at the start of your shift, and Hawk automatically splits recording into individual trips. No manual clips. No guesswork about when a passenger got in or out. The app knows, because it's watching the cabin.
The cabin camera (supported on Rideshare Pro) is mounted inside the car facing passengers. It runs simultaneously with the road camera. Both feeds record continuously. Both are encrypted. Both export together when you need them. We added passenger recording notices because the law varies by region. Rideshare Pro includes a built-in notice that displays when cabin recording is active. You're compliant, and your passengers know it.
The feature came from feedback. One Bolt driver asked if we could automate trip boundaries. Another asked if we could record the cabin without recording the road separately. We listened. Shift Mode and the dual-camera setup exist because drivers told us what they needed.
No subscription to start; Pro when you're ready
This matters because not every driver wants to commit. Free Hawk keeps 10 clips per month with 7-day retention. That's enough to test the app, understand how it works, and know whether you want more. If you do, Local Pro is £3.99 per month or £39.99 annually. Rideshare Pro is £8.99 per month or £69.99 per year. Lifetime purchase options exist for both tiers.
We built it this way because we didn't want to feel like a hidden cost. You can test Hawk for weeks without paying. You can export a dispute clip for free. You can see that it works before you commit to a paid tier. That's not a marketing strategy; it's respect for your time and money.
The phone you're already holding
Hawk works on any iPhone or Android. It doesn't require special hardware, no mounting bracket beyond whatever you'd use for navigation, no wiring. Most drivers already mount their phone on the dashboard for maps or the rideshare app itself. Hawk runs in the background while you work, stabilising footage with optical-flow algorithms that keep the image steady even on rough roads. It overlays GPS speed and timestamps (optional, controlled by your GDPR privacy settings). When you park and want to review a trip, you can replay the exact route on a map with your video synced to your position.
The simplicity is intentional. We didn't want Hawk to feel like a separate tool. It's just another app on your phone. Except it's also your evidence.
The hardware dashcam market assumes you'll install it once and forget about it. Hawk assumes you'll check it occasionally and rely on it when it matters. Which assumption matches your actual life?