Rear-View Cameras On Cars Could Become Mandatory In the US 754
According to the Los Angeles Times, "The federal government wants automakers to install back-up cameras in all new vehicles starting in late 2014. The plan, announced Friday, received a strong endorsement from insurance industry and other analysts and is likely to get some level of support from car manufacturers. ... The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that, on average, 292 fatalities and 18,000 injuries occur each year as a result of back-over crashes. The agency said children and the elderly were the most common victims. About 44% of the fatalities in such accidents are children and 33% are people over 70, it said. NHTSA said its proposal was designed to keep drivers from running over pedestrians who might be crossing behind their vehicles. It could also prevent parking-lot bumper thumpers. The camera systems show motorists what's behind them via a video display on the dashboard. They typically feature a bell or alarm that alerts the driver if an object is within the camera's field of view."
Super (Score:2, Insightful)
More Federal Government encroachment into our lives. Will they now ban all existing cars so we have to buy shiny new ones? "for the kids" of course.
Not quite far enough... (Score:4, Insightful)
292 fatalities a year in a country of 300+ million, and they want to legislate mandatory backup cameras...
If you legislate everyone be strapped to a medical exercise device and fed a perfectly balanced diet through a tube, everyone would be almost perfectly safe.
Drivers are the real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Ban them, and no more problem.
blah.
Re:Super (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, once cameras are everywhere, how about a little storage of the videos.
This coupled with the mandatory GPS units, etc would be just great for the insurance industry, and the govt...anyone that would like to see/monitor your driving habits.
How much do you want to bet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Already There (Score:3, Insightful)
Its called a rear-view mirror.
Unless its a toddler or a VERY short person, having an image on your dashboard, or to your top will make no difference to whether you can see them or not. If your kid is small enough such that someone reversing his car can't see him - then s/he probably shouldn't be out on their own.
Ultrasonic parking sensors should work fine. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cameras aren't necessary - mildly enhancing the standard ultrasonic parking sensors would address this problem for a fraction of the cost.
False sense of security (Score:5, Insightful)
The Russians used a pencil (Score:3, Insightful)
Reminds me of the NASA space pen allegory. But what really worries me is putting home theater center in dash. Is it just me or does it seem like little to no consideration is given to how many deaths are caused by driver distraction? Maybe I'm getting old too, but it seems like oncoming headlights have gotten way too bright when I'm driving. Don't even get me started on the giant blinking red billboard that reads "Buckle up for your safety." I wonder how many people look at the sign instead of the road.
It seems like they only make cars safer if it can co-inside with a feature that will raise the price or sell more cars.
OK, that's enough cynicism for one post...
Re:Super (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Super (Score:4, Insightful)
The brake light on the right side of the vehicle is nearly useless unless the vehicle is in the lane to your left because it isn't really in front of you when you're in the driver's seat. Thus, with traditional twin tail lights, you had only a single brake light filament standing between you and a wreck. The center brake light fixtures, by contrast, typically have multiple bulbs (or are LED-based, which are even more reliable), which means you now have typically four filaments standing between you and a wreck. They make driving a lot safer.
STOP (Score:5, Insightful)
I enjoy driving, and I drive a lot. My car is comfortable, gets good fuel economy (45-48MPG), has a manual transmission and drives like a car (not a golf cart). There are no screens (aside from the 1"x2" LCD clock and Odometer) and my speedometer and odometer have needles (so you can see how fast you're going out of your peripheral vision (is the needle straight up? I'm good)).
I agree, there are some safety features that should be in all cars... Seat belts, and airbags are important. But back up cameras? 292 fatalities a year. This is insignificant, seeing as how there are about 40,000 automobile fatalities per year, 0.7%? More people likely die from just being poor drivers. Why doesn't the government require better driver education before issuing licenses? Why don't we require retesting at certain ages? (Do you really think that all of the people out there driving in their late 80s drive just as well as they did when they were 19?) I'm betting fixing these problems would save a lot more lives than making us have more crap in our car.
If these cameras are mandatory, will they be included in states "safety" inspections? Will I be required to fix it if it breaks? If I swap out the stereo in my car for a different one, will I be required to reattach the camera?
Re:Super (Score:5, Insightful)
> Why? Do rear-view window brakelights alert the drivers behind you better...
Yes, they do. In particular, the so-called "cyclops" does not come on with the headlights, only with the brakes, with the result that "car ahead has lights on" and "car ahead is braking" give different configurations of lights, not just different brightnesses. The change in configuration is more attention-grabbing than just brightening an already-existing light configuration.
Re:False sense of security (Score:4, Insightful)
Newsflash - the camera has a limited field of view.
Not to mention a 2-dimensional image (depth of field is important when driving) that is of a considerably reduced size compared to reality.
She couldn't back up to save her ass, since she spent more time looking at the camera's feed then actually turning her head to look behind her.
Many drivers will likely start to rely solely on the camera image, instead of using it as an adjunct to a brief walkaround check and the normal "real life" turn-your-head field of view. It may save some lives, but I fear other preventable backup accidents will happen due to overreliance on the camera. In general, I feel that a lot of safety technology, including things like airbags and ABS, lull some drivers into a false sense of security that leads them to be more careless, inattentive, or even reckless. These devices are all well-intentioned, and undoubtedly have saved some lives, but are counterproductive if the most critical part of the vehicle -- the driver -- relies on them to the exclusion of good old-fashioned common sense and care.
Re:Super (Score:5, Insightful)
And as for the "bang for your buck" this is a pretty insignificant issue. Yes, 292 people lost per year to these things is tragic but it doesn't require massive costs. As for pedestrians, simply get away from cars that are backing up. It isn't that hard to see that a car is moving backwards and then move outside of its path. And what all does it add? We can't say that 292 people weren't seen by the driver had the driver been fully aware and the pedestrians using some basic common sense so we can't even eliminate that statistic. It is more government regulation with little to no true upside, will result in people relying on cameras or alarms rather than actually paying attention all the while we lose freedoms and money out of our pockets in both initial and maintenance costs, not to mention the potential for abuse.
Re:remarkable (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, first of all this is unrelated to the present article. This is about removing the blind which is diagonally back and to the side of the car. The article talks about removing a blind spot which is directly behind the car and results from the rear window being to high (which is a problem for almost all SUVs and minivans, as well as many types of cars).
The reason why that mirror is illegal probably has to do with the distortion it causes. Distortion tends to make things seem a different distance than they are, so it is not certain a mirror like this would not cause more accidents. But the government should certainly investigate this.
Re:Super (Score:5, Insightful)
So ... every day you see proof that the government isn't interested in banning old cars that do not meet the current standards for new cars? And yet you reject the evidence of your own eyes in favour of your ideological belief that the government is "out of control"?
No wonder American politics is so messed up, if this is representative of the thought processes of the average voter.
Re:Super (Score:2, Insightful)
Insanity of Modern Decision Making (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a core concept in decision making, called cost/benefit analysis, that our modern day society has completely forgotten. I mean this very seriously: Once you move from cost/benefit analysis decision making to Precautionary Principle decision making, you are officially insane, because you believe things that are contradictory. This applies (especially) to societies - if you refuse to make a decision because it has any con at all, you will be left with the status quo. This means that the Sierra Club and other Green groups, who oppose pretty much everything everywhere nowadays, are responsible for us being stuck with gas cars, coal burning power plants, and the ongoing destruction of our nation's food supply.
Some examples:
1) 10 kinda-sorta-endangered (threatened) desert tortoises are found near a new, environmentally happy C02-less solar plant in the Mojave. You might call it HELIOS-1 because you've played Fallout New Vegas, but this is a true story (it's actually in Ivanpah, which is a bit south of the HELIOS-1 plant in the game.) The company offered to relocate the tortoises at a cost of $100M. $10M per bloody tortoise. The Sierra Club and Senator Feinstein shut it down. Any downside whatsoever, even if the Pro column in the Green playbook is much bigger than the Con column, causes them to file lawsuits to shut it down.
2) See any number of examples of Green groups shutting down nuclear power plants or stopping them from being built. The really amusing/frustrating irony is that they then say that nuclear isn't a viable option because they continually encounter delays and cost overruns due to, well, their own lawsuits. Even though the Pro side is very good on nuclear from a Green perspective, they still block it because they are too stupid to know the difference between Chernobyl-style positve feedback plants and modern negative feedback plants. Bonus points for stupidity: a Green group that chained themselves to a fence of a local nuclear plant to protest the CO2 emissions it was emitting.
3) They're extending an interstate in North Carolina. 10 river snails on the Endangered Species List migrate up a branch of the river from their homeland downstream. The Endangered Species Act is our modern insanity codified into law - it doesn't matter how the Pro and Con balance works out, the new snail habitat must be protected. Even though rerouting the interstate will cost billions, add 10 minutes to every person's commute, and will cause untold extra car emissions to go into the atmosphere, it doesn't matter. We don't do cost/benefit analyses any more. They're going to reroute the interstate.
4) A buddy of mine (PhD economics from the University of California) got a job working for Fanny Mae over the summer. He started doing a cost benefit analysis of the effect of the Community Reinvestment Act and similar policies on our housing market, and on the economy in general. The first thing that he found was that nobody had done this analysis before. In Fannie Mae, Fortune 100 company whose entire business is based on these sorts of things. Conclusion number 2, it was possible to codify the costs for each of the lowerings of housing standards congress (i.e. Barney Frank) mandated to Fannie Mae. They kept pushing standards lower until the whole system collapsed. Conclusion number 3: nobody was ever able to quantify the upside of home ownership. Why is it important for people to own homes instead of renting, if all else is held the same. What kind of dollar value can be assigned to owning instead of renting? The whole system was based on a nebulous upside, subsidized by the American taxpayer, and nobody could say why, precisely.
Anyhow, going back to
Re:Tailgating and bird-watching (Score:4, Insightful)
I can think of one good use for rear-view cameras... dealing with tailgaters! Imagine being able to record some video of some primo dickbag in his BMW X5, angrily following five feet behind you at 50mph because you aren't willing to go significantly above the speed limit for him.
Or you could just pull the fuck over and let him go by, and then both of you can experience what it's like to go as fast as you want without some asshole trying to ruin it.
In California pulling over is required by law but only when people stack up behind you. So it's only when some dipshit like you is slowing down a whole BUNCH of people at once that they are legally obligated to pull over. Who cares if they want to go 5, 15, or 50 miles per hour faster than you? Why do you want them behind you anyway? I pull into a turnout at the least provocation, and if you had ever heard of a thing called the golden rule, you would too.
Tailgating is seriously fucking stupid, but holding people up is seriously fucking lame.
Re:Tailgating and bird-watching (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Super (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:remarkable (Score:2, Insightful)
If we trimmed the fat, most lawmakers' and regulators' heads would collapse.
Re:Cheap, good. It's called progress... (Score:4, Insightful)
That was WAY cheaper, because making a dual master as opposed to a single one adds very little brake line and only one fitting at the master, plus some changes to the piston. This is adding a video screen and camera.
In three years I doubt if the cost of a 9" non-touch lcd screen will be more than $1. Low res camera elements are so ubiquitous in phones now that they probably cost less than $1 in bulk today. There is no reason that adding a camera will add anything at all to the cost of the car in production... It will be effectively like a stylistic decision... except one that will make us all safer.
Re:Cheap, good. It's called progress... (Score:5, Insightful)
How much does it cost to add seat belts to a car design today? Essentially zero, because everyone designs for them from the start and the cost of the material is negligible compared to the car. The same will be true of the backup cameras. The cost of the silicon will go towards zero in production. It's just a matter of setting a standard so that everyone does it and people can come to expect it.
Did you know that in 2012 all new cars are going to be required to include electronic stability control? (The horror!) What does that cost? Well, at this point it's basically some software... which probably makes it more expensive than the hardware due to patents, etc. But at some point that issue will go away and it will cost about zero to add to a car.
Pat
Re:Insanity of Modern Decision Making (Score:5, Insightful)
Their powers aren't equally divided in favor of all the citizens. They are in the pockets of the corporate sector and at the whims of political moves when not superseded by the first. They also do not act in a logical and impartial manner.
This leads to things like Phillip Morris killing people for profit for millions of years, because they did the cost/benefit analysis and realized that in reality they can get away with human life and suffering costing them many orders of magnitude LESS than they should, all because they have the power.
The power to stop people in court with high powered attorneys. The power to get laws changed in their favor. The power to get CAPS put on damages.
That's just one example, but it happens all the time. Monsanto did the same when they polluted entire counties out of existence. Those other guys did the same in MA as portrayed in the civil action movie. BP is doing it right now and did it when they chose to ignore safety procedures and also had dick Cheney help cut off safety legislation at the pass for them. Halliburton is doing it right now if you've ever watched the documentary GASLAND.
The price of a human life and suffering becomes even smaller as you look internationally where the corporations wield more power. In fact, I'm willing to speculate that the price of human life and suffering in a cost benefit analysis is inversely correlated with corporate power to the point where corporate power is absolute and the price of a life approaches zero. This right here is the main reason corporations relocate abroad.
In essence, your definition of sanity and cost/benefit analyses only works when there is equality and a free market. I propose that these conditions only occur in bubbles in the geopolitical economic landscape we find ourselves in and not at all in some nation states.
Re:remarkable (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously useful tip: your car has a nice, wide rearview mirror to let you see what's behind you. Adjust your side mirrors to show you your blind spots. I've done this for over a decade.
The proposed back-up cameras are not supposed to take the place of existing mirrors. Rather, they are installed closer to the ground so that you can see what's behind you at a lower level than what's typically visible with the rear-view mirror (ie small children).
Re:Tailgating and bird-watching (Score:2, Insightful)
You are a sensible person. However, there are psychopathic yahoos like the parent who gain power the more people they slow down, and feel like they have conquered the world if they can get someone to rear end them. You have to pity people like this; people like this who pride themselves on 50 in a fast lane really don't seem to have much in their life except the will (and ability) to operate machinery in a manner that threatens lives, property, and safety.
In Germany, traffic laws there are sensible. People can be charged a fine based on the minutes wasted by all the drivers behind them. So if someone drives 20 on the Autobahn, expect a big Euro fine. We are taking Euros here; a real currency that isn't being printed into oblivion like the dollar. Rear-ender in Germany, it can easily be the person in front's fault, and the police actually investigate this. DWI in Germany is a totally different matter than in the US. Like to the cop about the beers drunk, that is a crime.
And the REAL reason is... (Score:4, Insightful)
You can bet that someone in congress is getting money from someone who manufactures backup cameras. Simple as that.
Re:Insanity of Modern Decision Making (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong site, dude. The original site was scrapped because of the tortoise. The second site was approved after they cut 100 acres of tortoise habitat out of the construction. And Greens still opposed it, due to incidental damage that might occur to the tortoises. Read the comments on your own link.
Here's what you should read instead:
http://greenenergyreporter.com/renewables/solar/green-on-green-brightsource-scraps-plans-for-mojave-desert-solar-farm/ [greenenergyreporter.com]
>>You think environmental impacts studies and lawsuits are what's keeping nuclear from being profitable enough to build? They're a fucking rounding error.
You're right, a 12 year delay due to lawsuits is a rounding error, but probably the other way than what you originally intended.
I'm not even counting the cost of seismic retrofitting - if you think that protests, blockades, and lawsuits didn't cause Diablo Canyon's numbers to be blown the fuck out of the water between the time it was finished (1973) and licensed (1985), you're out of your fucking mind.
Re:The Russians used a pencil (Score:5, Insightful)
You apparently live somewhere where there's enough light to make you think it's daytime 24/7. If you find it scary to drive at night without high-beams then please stop driving at night, you aren't qualified. That said, turning your high beams on is an incredibly simple matter. It varies from car to car but it's always one of 3 things. Push the stick that controls the lights forward. Pull the stick that controls the lights back. Turn on a switch next to the steering column. (If your car is incredibly old then you might have a foot switch to turn them on, but if this were the case then you'd already know about it)
Re:The Russians used a pencil (Score:5, Insightful)
> If you find it scary to drive at night without high-beams then please stop driving at night, you aren't qualified. ...and that really is kind of offensive. I'm perfectly qualified to drive at night, thank you very much. Although driving at night on roads where there are no streetlights is kind of dangerous, and really no one should be doing it if it can be helped. Btw the road I'm talking about had "exactly zero lights".
That may offend you, but he's right. You're not qualified to drive at night. If you think it's scary, and can't turn on your high beams without checking your car manual, then you shouldn't be doing it. It doesn't matter how qualified you _think_ you are. You can't do it safely. End of story.
I grew up in the middle of nowhere with no street lights. I use high beams at night, make sure they're clean and well aligned, and can see quite well with them.
As for the idiot speeding on the wrong side of the road to avoid the cops....this can happen any time of day, in any location, urban or otherwise. Not exactly a night-only problem.
Re:The Russians used a pencil (Score:5, Insightful)
Sincerely,
The Other People On The Road