When the other driver said I didn't see the light

The moment you realise video isn't enough

I'm the founder of MRVL Technologies, which means I spend a lot of time thinking about evidence. Not in the abstract way lawyers do, but in the way someone does when they're sitting in a traffic collision waiting for the police, realising that the video they have might be useless if they can't prove it hasn't been edited.

That day on the A3, I didn't have a phone-based dashcam. I had a dedicated hardware unit, which sounds professional until you realise it's a £200 black box with no way to prove the footage is authentic. Anyone can edit video. Anyone can claim 'this is fake.' The other driver knew it. I knew it.

When we launched Hawk two years ago, we didn't start with 'we'll replace your dashcam.' We started with a different question: what would it take for your phone to be more trustworthy than a dedicated device? The answer wasn't better video quality. It was proof.

SHA-256 and the language of the courts

Every clip Hawk records gets written with a SHA-256 integrity hash. If you don't know what that means, here's the short version: it's cryptographic proof that the clip hasn't been altered by even one pixel. Insurance companies understand it. Police understand it. Lawyers understand it. A magistrate understands it because they've seen it in other cases.

We didn't invent this. It's how hospitals protect medical records, how banks protect transactions. But nobody was doing it on a dashcam app. When we built it into Hawk, the question wasn't 'will it work.' It was 'will people actually care enough to set it up?'

They did. Within the first month of Rideshare Pro launch, we had drivers telling us that their insurers were asking specifically for Hawk clips because they trusted the hash. One Uber driver in Manchester told us the difference between 'I have video' and 'I have court-ready video' was the difference between a police interview and going home.

The evidence locker problem

You record something. You know it's important. You lock it away. Then someone asks you for it, and you can't find it, or you're not sure which clip is which, or you've recorded over it by accident.

The Evidence Locker in Hawk solves this with something that sounds simple but changes everything: you can save clips with a biometric lock, and they stay locked until you unlock them. No expiry. No cloud sync unless you're on Pro and you choose iCloud. They're yours.

When we first built this, we tested it with a group of new drivers in London. One of them came back with feedback that stuck with us. 'I was worried the app would delete my clips automatically,' he said. 'I wanted to know they'd still be there in six months when the insurance company finally asked about it.' That's when we realised that Evidence Locker isn't a feature; it's a peace of mind you can actually hold in your hand.

One tap to dispute

Fast forward to the actual dispute. You need to send your evidence to the insurance company, or to the police, or to a solicitor. With most dashcam setups, you're hunting through files, emailing MP4s, hoping the recipient can open them.

With Hawk, you tap dispute export. The app generates a ZIP file with your video, the GPS overlay showing speed and timestamp, a trip map, and a manifest file that includes the SHA-256 hash. You send one file. The recipient opens it. They see everything they need.

We've had users send this ZIP to three different insurers and watch the speed of their claim process change instantly. One user told us that her insurer called her back within 24 hours when she sent the Hawk export, whereas previously they'd asked for 'more information' five times.

The phone you already have

Here's the thing that took us longest to get right. A dedicated dashcam is a dedicated dashcam. Your phone is your phone. If Hawk required constant charging, constant fiddling, constant subscription payments just to record, it would sit on a shelf next to the old hardware unit.

So we built it to run on loop recording without a subscription. You can start with the free tier on any iPhone or Android, record 10 clips a month with 7-day retention, and see if you even need more. If you do, Local Pro is £3.99 a month or £39.99 a year. Rideshare drivers get Rideshare Pro with cabin camera and shift mode for multi-trip sessions, because they're recording their livelihood eight hours a day.

The app handles the technical side. Optical flow stabilisation so the video doesn't look like it was shot on a rollercoaster. GPS overlays that gated by your privacy settings, because we know some people don't want their location stored. iCloud sync for Pro clips if you want redundancy. Voice commands through Siri Shortcuts so you can save a clip without taking your eyes off the road.

What I'd tell the other driver now

If I could go back to the A3 and have that conversation again, I'd stand there with Hawk running, and when he said 'I had a green light,' I'd already have something he couldn't argue with. Not just video. Evidence.

I don't build Hawk to make driving feel paranoid or adversarial. But I do build it because the moment someone disagrees about what happened on the road is the moment you realise how much your phone is worth to you. Not as a piece of technology, but as a witness.