A method of saving image data of a camera in an accident data recorder of a vehicle involves: a) performing object recognition to determine object data regarding objects detected from the camera image data; b) compressing the camera image data by a lossy compression method to form compressed image data; c) storing the object data and the compressed image data in a storage unit; d) overwriting the data in the storage unit after a predefined volume of data has been stored; and e) statically saving the object data and the compressed image data in response to a trigger signal.