Drive recorder and data recording method

A drive recorder that records, in a temporally continuous manner, a piece of video data showing surroundings of a vehicle on a recording medium, the drive recorder comprising:

• an obtaining means for obtaining the piece of video data;
• a recording means for recording a new piece of video data on the recording medium by overwriting, with the new piece of video data, an other piece of video data among a plurality of pieces of video data which have been recorded on the recording medium, the other piece of video data being data for which overwrite prohibition is not designated;
• a detecting means for detecting an occurrence of an event;
• a transmitting means for transmitting, to an external device, a piece of status data indicating status at a time of and/or before and after the occurrence of the event;
• a receiving means for receiving, from the external device, a determination result obtained by the external device determining, based on the piece of status data, whether the overwrite prohibition is designated for a piece of event video data, the piece of event video data being the piece of video data showing surroundings of the vehicle at the time of and/or before and after the occurrence of the event;
• a prohibiting means for designating, based on the determination result, the overwrite prohibition for the piece of event video data;
• and
• a notifying means for providing a user with a notification when a total number of pieces of event video data for which overwrite prohibition is designated by the prohibiting means exceeds a predetermined threshold.

A data recording method for recording, in a temporally continuous manner, a piece of video data showing surroundings of a vehicle on a recording medium, the data recording method comprising:

• (a) obtaining the piece of video data;
• (b) recording a new piece of video data obtained in (a) on the recording medium by overwriting, with the new piece of video data, an other piece of video data among a plurality of pieces of video data which have been recorded on the recording medium, the other piece of video data being data for which overwrite prohibition is not designated;
• (c) detecting an occurrence of an event;
• (d) transmitting, to an external device, a piece of status data indicating status at a time of and/or before and after the occurrence of the event;
• (e) receiving, from the external device, a determination result obtained by the external device determining, based on the piece of status data, whether the overwrite prohibition is designated for a piece of event video data, the piece of event video data being the piece of video data showing surroundings of the vehicle at the time of and/or before and after the occurrence of the event;
• (f) designating, based on the determination result, overwrite prohibition for the piece of event video data;
• and
• (g) counting a total number of pieces of event video data for which overwrite prohibition is designated in the designating.