A new law requiring dashcams in commercial trucks traveling through BC Canada may create business for Canadian and even US dealers.
The law, M217, passed the BC legislature unanimously in June and is expected to be signed by the BC’s Lieutenant Governor, later this year or early 2027. There are two key points for the aftermarket: the law would apply to commercial trucks even those just passing through BC Canada, which includes US trucks doing short runs or travelling via the Alaskan highway.
Secondly, other Canadian provinces may follow suit. CameraMatics called the bill, “a pretty clear signal of where fleet safety across North America is heading.”
Approximately 5.3 million to 5.5 million commercial trucks cross the US-Canada border annually, according to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
The law requires a dashcam to be installed that has a resolution of 1080p with video retention of at least 72 hours with a forward facing camera and night vision. It applies to all vehicles with licensed gross vehicle weight over 26,00 pounds. Once the bill takes effect, truckers have 6 months to comply.
SoundsGood Auto, with two stores in BC, Canada already sells about 80 dashcams a month and is preparing to ramp up sales with the new law’s passage. Owner Keith McCumber is seeking to hire a full-time tech to be on the road installing the dashcams. “It will be big” he said. “There’s tens of thousands of trucks that have to come through BC, to deliver goods… “We’ve been seeing business for a while now because the trucking companies recognized what was going to happen,” he added.
Ben Delgrosso of Safe Drive Solutions, a large dashcam retailer in BC Canada, hasn’t seen a bump in sales yet. He expects that fleet managers will start seeking quotes on the new dashcams this year to include the installations in their 2027 budget.
Most consumer cameras don’t offer 72 hours of footage.
Delgrosso questions the specifications the law requires. “They are saying you need 72 hours of footage. But it doesn’t specify frames per second. I can put a unit in time- lapse and make a dashcam that records 12 hours of footage into 360 hours but that won’t catch full details.” He added, “Most front cameras we typically deal with are 2- or 4K with a 128GB SD card. That is about 12 hours of video footage. A 512 GB card would be 48 hours, but you can put it down to 1080p and get 72 hours.” However the price of the 512 card can be $150 US. And he wonders who is going to be inspecting the dashcams to make sure they have a 72 hour capacity.
The Bill M217 does not state that the dashcam must be permanently installed, but it does say, “An operator of a commercial vehicle must ensure that the dashboard camera in the commercial vehicle (a) is recording at all times the commercial vehicle is operated, subject to any regulations, and (b) is not obstructed or prevented from recording.”
An incentive for fleet owners apart from legal compliance is that 75 to 80 percent of commercial drivers are not at fault in collisions, according to the B.C. Trucking Association, so the camera protects the owners from liability.
CameraMatics said the Canadian Ministry of Transportation has implied that further details, including enforcement and penalties will be published within 6 months to a year after the bill is signed.
You can view the law here.
