Should Cameras Replace Car Mirrors? US Regulators Want To Know (bloomberg.com) 309
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a notice on Wednesday that is is seeking public and industry input on whether to allow so-called camera monitoring systems to replace rear- and side-view mirrors mandated by a longstanding U.S. auto safety standard. Tesla Inc. and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers in 2014 petitioned the agency to allow cameras to be used in lieu of traditional mirrors, citing improved fuel economy through reduced aerodynamic drag as the primary benefit. Cameras feeding one or more displays inside the car could also improve rear and side visibility, the Auto Alliance has said.
A five-year agency study of the technology on heavy-duty vehicles found display screens were too bright, making it harder for drivers to see objects on the road ahead. NHTSA's 2017 tests of a prototype camera monitoring system found it was "generally usable" in most situations, and produced better-quality images than mirrors at dusk and dawn. It also found potential flaws, including displays that were too bright at night, distorted images and camera lenses that would become obscured by raindrops. NHTSA said in a notice in the online Federal Register is seeking outside research and data about the potential safety impacts of replacing mirrors with cameras to inform a possible proposal to alter the mirror requirement in the future.
A five-year agency study of the technology on heavy-duty vehicles found display screens were too bright, making it harder for drivers to see objects on the road ahead. NHTSA's 2017 tests of a prototype camera monitoring system found it was "generally usable" in most situations, and produced better-quality images than mirrors at dusk and dawn. It also found potential flaws, including displays that were too bright at night, distorted images and camera lenses that would become obscured by raindrops. NHTSA said in a notice in the online Federal Register is seeking outside research and data about the potential safety impacts of replacing mirrors with cameras to inform a possible proposal to alter the mirror requirement in the future.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Augment, sure, replace, no. Lose the current, you're blinded. Why is this a question?
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I would assume one's eyes still work long enough to get the vehicle safely to its destination? Last I looked you're still required to shoulder check as well, at least where I live. For heavy vehicles where payload, truck boxes or trailers block view then mirrors should absolutely still be a requirement, but for a passenger vehicle with the usual arrangement of windows, mirrors are already an augmentation to what you **should** be doing with your eyes.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
It will result in people driving around with no mirrors. "Oh it just broke." "I am on the way to repair it now." Causing a loss of safety on the road. After an accident they cause, "it was working fine, the accident must have knocked out the camera."
And these will be much more expensive and difficult to replace, meaning people simply won't get it done until they absolutely have to at a yearly inspection.
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, that's a very good point.
A cop can currently, very easily see if your mirror is broken. How does a copy tell if a camera is broken? It's another thing that police won't be able to spot check...
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So change the regulation...
Cameras can be used in place of mirrors subject to the following restrictions:
Camera system must have multiple cameras and lens systems with internal redundancies and detect failures, damage, or dirtiness of a camera or lens system, additional battery backup for camera and monitoring and provide continued uninterrupted view after multiple component failures.
Cars with camera systems must transmit wirelessly an unencrypted but digitally signed standards-based system status mes
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
I think of equal importance is the fact that a mirror is a two way device, where a camera is only a one way device. I regularly can see other drivers through their mirrors and intuit their actions and expectations based on that. I can't do that with a camera.
Re:No (Score:5, Funny)
"Understanding other driver's intentions is what indicator lights are for."
Obviously you've not driven on American roads in the past 20 years if you think most people actual use those signals....
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
As a full time cyclist -- I often look through windows, mirrors, etc. of vehicles nearby to see if the driver can (a) see me and (b) is looking my direction. I can make myself as bright, obnoxious looking as possible, but if they are looking down at their phones or something else, I'll avoid them by 30' so I don't get run over. Without the mirrors (and the trend of having heavily tinted windows), I have little chance of knowing what I'm up against.
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
And these will be much more expensive and difficult to replace, meaning people simply won't get it done until they absolutely have to at a yearly inspection.
Which some states, like these [wikipedia.org], don't have:
Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Florida, Wyoming
Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
Which some states, like these [wikipedia.org], don't have:
Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Florida, Wyoming
They don't have them because they don't reduce accidents. Most accidents are caused by humans. Mechanical failures cause a very small number of accidents, and safety inspections are ineffective at reducing even those.
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The auto industry lobbied for the regular inspections. They even managed to convince Denmark to dismantle its government run inspection centres, instead letting mechanics inspect their own repairs. Corruption was inevitable.
On the upside, the fact that safety inspections do not reduce accidents means that rendering them ineffective does not cost lives.
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Yeah, because that *never* happens with the physical mirrors we've got now.
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It will result in people driving around with no mirrors. "Oh it just broke." "I am on the way to repair it now." Causing a loss of safety on the road. After an accident they cause, "it was working fine, the accident must have knocked out the camera."
"Sir, the reason I pulled you over is because your side camera malfunction light is blinking."
"Sir, your vehicle's OBD says this condition has been for 284 days."
And these will be much more expensive and difficult to replace, meaning people simply won't get it done until they absolutely have to at a yearly inspection.
"To install your replacement unit, locate the release button located on the pillar support inside the vehicle. Once released, remove the defective module and install the new one, pressing firmly until it clicks into position. Once the external malfunction light is no longer blinking, please confirm the operation of the camera via the center console
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
You're dreaming. It'll have to be done at the dealer and if you do manage to do it yourself, the computer will need reprogramming at the dealer.
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Hell, I think the problem with most newer drivers ts that they DON'T move their heads and eyes around enough to look around them....
Please, keep the mirrors....and if your camera goes out, will be a VERY $$ repair......mirror replacement not so bad, and mirrors are less apt to fail unless physically impacted...electronics can fail at any time for any number of reasons.
Short sighted (Score:3)
They will be expensive to repair for the first 5 years. Then they will be CHEAPER than mirrors. Because when you lose the mirror, you're generally losing the housing around it. And the mirror has little adjusting cams, etc. It's all expensive. When you break your mirror, you go to the junkyard as a cheap replacement -- but even then you have to paint and fade that paint, etc.
A camera
A. won't break because it's not STICKING OUT -- that's why we want them: Less air resistance. But also they're not goign
Mirrors provide more and are robust (Score:5, Insightful)
Mirrors provide depth of focus information
Mirrors provide binocular vision information
3mm of mud, snow or rain will cover most camera lenses, but mirrors have large area and don't fail so easily.
Mirrors tolerate scratching and abuse.
Easy to re-point a mirror.
Mirror's not blinded by saturated blooming from light sources like headlights
Mirrors give accurate color information
eye's have a greater dynamic range than cameras
Motion blur due to camera frame rate.
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Mirrors provide depth of focus information
Mirrors provide binocular vision information
Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.
Mirror's not blinded by saturated blooming from light sources like headlights
Unless you have fancy dimming mirrors, they damn well are.
eye's have a greater dynamic range than cameras
You have an apostrophe stuck in your eyes. You should have that looked at.
My backup camera works better at night than my eyes, because when I'm using it I typically just came out of somewhere bright.
Also, just in general, cameras can be much, much better than human eyes, thanks to access to IR. This was settled for military sights long ago. It's not even close. It's a question of cost, and a question
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Mirrors provide depth of focus information
Mirrors provide binocular vision information
Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.
Object displayed in a screen, relayed from a camera placed elsewhere, may be closer than they appear... for the exact same physical reasons. On the other hand, they may be father than they appear, if the screen and camera are placed differently. Or they may be on reversed sides of the vehicle, if the camera feeds are completely wrong... and it only gets worse from there.
Mirror's not blinded by saturated blooming from light sources like headlights
Unless you have fancy dimming mirrors, they damn well are.
Nope. My mirror will not 'saturate'. My eyes may be overwhelmed by the light being accurately reflected, but I can rely on the mirror t
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Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.
I think you mean: "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear". Further, that text only exists to remind morons that their own vehicle extends behind their ass. It's not there to cover for any fault or shortcoming of optical reflection.
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It's not there to cover for any fault or shortcoming of optical reflection.
It's there because the passenger-side mirror is a convex mirror, so the things in it literally are closer than they appear.
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Mirrors can be aimed to blind the arsehole tailgating you with their high beams on.
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There is no depth of focus or binocular information outside of a a few feet from your eyes. Objects in a car mirror are far to distant for binocular vision to estimate distance, provided you even have two eyes on the mirror. At 20 feet, depth of focus accommodation is less that 1/6th a diopter, and once you are past 45 years of age, you pretty much lose depth of focus anyway.
Cameras do not have to be re-pointed, that is actually an improvement over mirrors since mirrors are often pointed incorrectly
Re:Mirrors provide more and are robust (Score:4, Insightful)
It's sad to see such an ill-informed post modded insightful.
Mirrors do not provide proper depth information anywhere near equal to direct vision. Especially tiny mirrors in cars. Meanwhile, cameras can overlay distance markers so you know exactly where someone is. ... really? This is a side view mirror, not a video game in 240fps 8k HDR.
Both camera's and mirrors can be obscured by ice, mud, snow, rain, condensation etc. But it's way easier to keep a small lens clean.
Mirrors BREAK as do the control mechanisms on them. A small, wide angle lens needs no such mechanical system and is MUCH more durable when it comes to road hazards, debris, or vandals.
Again, camera's dont need to be re-pointed. They can be more ideally positioned and wide angle AND don't need to be adjusted when you swap drivers anyway.
I'm not sure how accurate colors are relevant to side view mirrors, but playing along: camera's can provide HDR video which is oodles more useful than knowing which shade of dirty white that box truck is.
Camera's are much more versatile when dealing with low light and glare than eyes are. Dynamic range isn't particularly relevant when you can't see crap because of the car with it's high beams on, or trying to park on a dark road.
Motion blur
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Also:
Cameras can use nonlinear intensity functions, false color, and even light outside the visual range (such as infrared) to improve visibility over a simple mirror and prevent dazzling and dim image obscuration by bright lights or the sun.
Cameras can let the image be displayed in locations other than those where a continuous broad light passage from the mirror location is available.
Camera images can be trivially overlaid with heads-up display information and augmented reality annotation (recognized objec
The biggest problem with mirrors (Score:3)
The optimal position for mirrors is actually o [stackexchange.com]
Re: Mirrors provide more and are robust (Score:3)
Don't forget that mirrors work both ways. I can see the driver ahead of me in his mirrors, and I can see when he's more interested in looking at his phone than looking at the road. I can then adapt to that.
If his car has cameras, I have less information to use when driving.
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No. Augment, sure, replace, no. Lose the current, you're blinded. Why is this a question?
Because broken mirror, you are blinded. What's the difference?
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A broken mirror costs little and anyone can replace it. Expensive broken items don't get fixed.
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Why do you think a car mirror costs less than a camera? Have you ever had one knocked off by a misplaced construction barrel? They're not by any stretch cheap, while cameras can be (whether cameras good enough to do the job are cheap, I dunno).
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The obvious solution is to require everyone to have two mirrors on each side, so if one breaks off, there is a spare.
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Much easier to fix a mirror with tape, much easier to improvise a mirror if the frame is there still, and much cheaper to fix a mirror right.
Also, camera tends to work or not. A lot of mirror damage leaves partial functionality in place.
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No. Augment, sure, replace, no. Lose the current, you're blinded. Why is this a question?
I agree. However, I'd be in favour of making front rear and side facing cameras as a standard required feature. It would have made life quite a bit more expensive for several people who backed into my car on parking lots and then buggereded off leaving me with a hefty repair bill. I've retrofitted my cars with cameras for several year now and the things have come in handy quite a few times since then. It's fun to sit there and hear the other guy lying though his teeth to the insurance investigator until yo
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Sounds expensive and difficult to maintain... sometimes the simpler solutions is better and more cost effective. That being said back up cameras in addition to the mirrors are nice and if rain or snow or ice blocks the camera lens you still have your mirrors.
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My brother installs the bird's eye view ones (Score:2)
My brother sells and installs systems like you are talking about . The screen shows the area all around the car, as if there were a camera 30 feet above.
It's actually generated from several tiny cameras mounted on the car facing different directions with whatever kinds of lenses, then stitched together to form an overview image. Near stuff
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Never had a single problem with my backup camera, except in weather heavy enough that my mirrors weren't useful either.
There is no comparison to a real mirror, which can also be inexpensively replaced if it ever becomes damaged.
The side mirrors on my car are several hundred dollars, much more if the entire "pod" gets knocked off (which has happened to me before). Is that cheap?
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Whose sexy baby?!?
Not YOUR sexy baby. Either way, if you go anywhere near it I'll call the feds and tell them you're creeping on babies and calling them sexy.
Mirrors work, keep 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
We're talking about safety. Aerodynamics be damned, we need safety... and relying on simple tech for safety is better because simple fails the least. Cameras are great additions, but not replacements.
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For those of us who have driving for a while, we are used to the mirrors, at least the side mirrors,
I find the lane deviation signals and the collision imminent signals to be over aggressive. We all know when warning signals become pervasive they tend to be ignored n
I think we have tried HUD is cars and they were abondined for some reason. Maybe reliability, maybe distraction.
I think we will move to cameras, if for no other reason than they soon will b
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We're talking about safety. Aerodynamics be damned, we need safety...
Said the future [ (a) new or (b) "retired" ] Boeing engineer ... :-)
Re:Mirrors work, keep 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
The people pushing this don't give a shit about fuel economy. They want to sell cameras.
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The people pushing this don't give a shit about fuel economy. They want to sell cameras.
Perhaps. But nevertheless, removing both side mirrors improves fuel economy by 4-6%.
That will mean saving about $20B in fuel annually in America alone.
As to whether it is safer or not, we should look at the evidence. Cameras can fail. Mirrors can also fail. Cameras give much better visibility. Which is better? The obvious answer is to run a pilot program and find out rather than making assumptions.
They absolutely care about fuel economy (Score:2)
We don't need improved energy efficiency. (Score:2)
The whole premise is nonsense.
We have a *gigantic* fusion reactor in the sky! Even if we literally used up every atom of Earth and the moon, we couldn't make enough solar power generators to use up even a fraction of the energy it emits every second, whether we use it or not.
What we need is more solar power towers in deserts and such, HVDC lines, and covered pumped-storage hydroelectricity in old mine pits etc!
With that, even converting CO2 and water into fuel, cleanly burning it in fuel cells, and releasin
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bah (Score:5, Interesting)
Christ.
I don't need MORE LIGHT constantly SHINING IN MY EYES AS I DRIVE, which is what LCD / ETC screens, with camera views of the rear will be.
It's already bad enough, I turn off all leds/light on the dash I can when driving at night. But this will be like staring into a couple of tablet screens, glaring into you constantly whilst you drive.
NO. NO NO NO.
To you 'city folk', sure. You're driving in a place where you don't even need headlights, with all the lights from buildings, city lights, and other cars. I drive in the country, where on a moonless light it's you, and your headlights, and that's it. Having all this crap on the dash is already bad enough.
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It's a Tesla. The entire dashboard is a giant LCD panel already. How much more harm could a couple of tiny ones cause?
Besides, if you do it right (with OLEDs, not LCDs), the dark areas will actually be dark, and only the bright areas will be light. And the bright areas will still be darker than some jerk's high beams reflecting off the mirror, so in the grand scheme of
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Right, this is desired by Tesla, but other car makers seem to be asking about it too.
OLEDs are better, as long as they don't screw it up and put all sorts of other dancing, moving, whatever stuff on the screen. EG, as you say, keep it dark dark. And also, if they let you reduce the brightness as much as you want. I've had cell phones with OLEDs that were too bright, glaring bright, on the lowest light setting.. and here, we won't have things like those 'brightness filter' apps on Android.
The only benefit
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To be fair, you don't get to set the max brightness of the idiot behind you with hacked up blue HIDs.
It's not rocket science to adapt brightness to the environment (dark car insides) and clip the high brightness areas to something usable. Heck, HDR video would potentially be better than your eyes can do, especially around dusk/dawn/HIDs.
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The only benefit I can see of OLED, is it could be like a fancy filter they have on a space suit. EG, when the lights behind you are bright as the sun, the OLED could have a cap that YOU GET TO SET as max brightness.
But I know how it works, it will be too bright, because someone will say "But someone might make it too dark, and think its' broken in the daytime!" or some crap. It's *always* this way.
I'm using a $40 LCD and a $20 camera and even I have auto gain control. I have the brightness totally cranked on the display. During the day everything looks normal. In the early evening, everything still looks like daylight. At night, AGC keeps the camera from washing out. AGC is old, cheap technology, obviously.
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> I drive in the country, where on a moonless light it's you, and your headlights, and that's it. Having all this crap on the dash is already bad enough.
While a fair point, that also opens the idea of if there were mirror screens on your dash for rear facing information, why not add another screen with an IR camera front facing so that the view ahead would be dramatically improved?
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To you 'city folk', sure. You're driving in a place where you don't even need headlights, with all the lights from buildings, city lights, and other cars. I drive in the country, where on a moonless light it's you, and your headlights, and that's it. Having all this crap on the dash is already bad enough.
Honda has this sort of feature where there is a camera on the passenger side mirror that you can show in the center touch screen. It's intended to let you get a better view of your blind spot, but it turns out that it's also quite useful at night because they can increase the exposure and make a dark scene more visible than it would be to your naked eyes. It's not quite night vision, and honestly works best around twilight and not when it's completely dark out, but it's more useful than you'd think.
Of cours
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Well, I still say 'bah', but now it's a quieter 'bah' and I'm pondering.
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I've had a honda with the very mirror you mention for ~3 years. I love it, especially when merging in heavy city traffic. My eyes still face forward, I can see my entire side AND blind spot, and even get markers to help judge just how close this suicide merge will be...
I wish I had one on both sides TBH.
Re:bah (Score:4, Interesting)
Cameras will reduce the bright lights shining in your eyes, i.e. the headlights of other cars. Instead of simply reflecting some idiot's high beams into your retina the camera with polarized filter and IR night vision will display a dimmed image that you can adjust the brightness of to your personal preference.
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This won't help... I'm not sure you realise how glaring bright light is in the country.
In my current car, I actually can't see directly behind me at all, unless I lean to the left or right. The reason being, that light from cars behind me, will literally blind me at night. Ever have someone shine a flashlight in your eyes when it's pitch black?
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Not to mention, the entire point was to keep the camera a tiny thing outside, if you put the LCD outside, then there's no point in using a camera.
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That's a woosh.
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I hope you are being sarcastic. If you are going to move the screens to the outside of the vehicle it is eliminating one of the reasons the automotive companies want the mirrors replaced (i.e. they wouldn't be any more aerodynamic than a mirror).
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That won't work very well in colder states. The LCDs would be sluggish if they worked at all.
They would likely have a high failure rate in a variety of climates they would likely encounter.
Betteridge's Law (Score:5, Interesting)
Sums it up.
Not with current display tech (Score:2)
I personally, think they should stay in the same place they currently are, so its easier to associate where the camera feeds are coming from, but maybe thats me just being used to what I'm used to.
The big deal is that most days I can't even see my backup camera display either some random glare spot is created by the sun shining through any of the windows in my vehicle or this display is simply to dim to begin with. So, I can't imgine this going main stream unless the displays were either Mini CRTs or some
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The big deal is that most days I can't even see my backup camera display either some random glare spot is created by the sun shining through any of the windows in my vehicle or this display is simply to dim to begin with. So, I can't imgine this going main stream unless the displays were either Mini CRTs or some decent replacement came out that could provide enough light to be useful in the day.
You must have some crummy cameras or screens. It's incredible rare for my backup or side-view camera to have so much glare they're difficult to use.
Probably (Score:3)
I've been driving a sprinter cargo, I put a rear view camera on it using almost literally the cheapest crap on Amazon (the display was second cheapest and crappiest) and it's worked surprisingly well. Next time I'd spend another few bucks and get a shaded cam with more IR LEDs, but anyway... I only have trouble seeing very distant vehicles. If you used higher-quality components there would be no real down side. It's getting harder and harder to see out of the back of cars because of the ever-rising trunk lines and growing rear pillars.
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The issue is when something goes wrong. I've seen plenty of mirrors with scratches and cracks that work fine. Scratch or bang that tiny camera lens and you lose the rear-view.
High-tech solutions just don't have safe fall-backs.
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The issue is when something goes wrong. I've seen plenty of mirrors with scratches and cracks that work fine. Scratch or bang that tiny camera lens and you lose the rear-view.
High-tech solutions just don't have safe fall-backs.
Put two cameras on the back, one towards each side. Generate the rear view by merging both cameras, until one fails. Or you could put one below the other, and let the user select between them.
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It's funny how wiling some people are to spend gadzillions of dollars and create complex systems to get a high tech solution that works almost as well as ancient tech.
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So instead of the redundant cameras and such, just use the backup camera as an adjunct to the mirror. I'm not objecting to cameras categorically, just to having them instead of the mirrors.
In a self-driving world, who needs mirrors? (Score:2)
In the future, when the computer is driving for you, the mirror becomes useless. So it's really not a question of whether cameras should or will replace mirrors, but rather a question of when they should do so.
Tesla seems to think that this future is almost here, and that the aerodynamic drag of the mirrors is a big loss for little gain. If you are driving a Tesla with FSD and are mostly using AP for lane changes anyway, that might actually be a valid point.
BUT — and this is a big but — a mir
Re:In a self-driving world, who needs mirrors? (Score:4, Interesting)
Self driving cars will never happen.
First, it'll be 10+ years before they can drive everywhere, and be universally useful. Maybe longer.
(EG, in sleet, rain, snow, slush, unplowed roads, dirt roads, driveways with dirt and grass growing in them, on and on...)
But, outside of that? Tesla is the worst for this, because they're one hack away from (for example) a state actor, or just a kid in a basement, causing all cars to accelerate to 100mph at noon on Friday.
I don't get how people can even SLIGHTLY trust remote update capability. And updates without an oversight committee. You know, the actual *hardware* for cars is inspected and approved by state regulators, but software? Nope.
So.. let's say last week the above hack happened in what... 10M lines of Tesla code? And people accept the update, or the update just happens, and then a month from now BAM!
Future terrorist and state-actor based attacks are mostly here, with all sorts of interesting hacks on infrastructure already happening.
I'd prefer a human filter between that computer and me.
Yeah ... "Not even" no. (Score:3)
What a stupid question.
* It is not an either-or. You can have both! Woah!
* Cameras can fail. Mirrors not really.
* Cameras create another source of leaks and permanent public records to harass people with, even decades later. And make no mistake: Where there is a spyig device, there is a totalitatian wanting access to it, and a scumbag abusing it as intended.
* Cameras have lag, a low fram rate, shitty light sensitivity, and nonlinear image/color distortion.
* And to add injury to insult, they cost more too!
So can I just say, from everyone here, a healthy FUCK OFF!
And take your insanity with you.
Blinded by headlights behind you (Score:2)
I despise getting blinded because the headlights of the truck behind me reflect off the side mirror and into my eyes.
I've always wanted a system that would darken headlights in both mirrors and windshield. There is an episode of ST:TNG where they are studying a sun, put the sun on the viewscreen, then when everyone squints at the brightness Data puts an overlay a circle that darkens that part of the viewscreen.
I imagined doing it by putting one of those transparent LCDs over the windshield and mirror, and
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Some cars already have this - autodimming rear view mirrors. Well my car has it anyway.
The big question (Score:2)
Cameras Mirrors (Score:2)
Analysis paralysis (Score:3)
I came expecting the regulators to be against it but surprised seeing so much of /. going on about 'what if' as well.
It's not like traditional mirrors are perfect by any means and camera's have plenty of advantages
- Camera's can be positioned to avoid blind spots entirely while mirrors can't. Heck, my Honda has this already and it includes markers to tell you how far away someone is when merging even.
- You can position the screens to limit how much a driver needs to take their eyes off the road ahead to check the road behind and next to them.
- A camera can be more or less flush mounted, eliminating the chance of getting your mirror clipped/broken/etc.
While everyone's busy crying about how it's a possible safety risk if they break...you might want to take note of how many other critical systems are already electronic in modern cars. You know...like steering and brakes for instance? I rather doubt losing your mirrors to a glitch would be more dangerous than brakes.
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Cars generally have a mechanical backup. Steering has the rack and pinion, brakes are hydraulic and you can slow the car via engine compression or regen braking and the parking brake, which is usually cable actuated in case the hydraulic system is compromised.
There is also the cost when they break. You can "fix" a side mirror with $2 and some duct tape in a pinch. Cameras and screens are going to be expensive.
For cost, we could mitigate that somewhat by requiring an open standard for camera signaling, form
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Not to mention parking brakes that are push-button these days in many cars as well.
Neither of those have a mechanical backup.
As for cost, if you really want to dig into long-terms usage; the aerodynamics will reduce fuel usage which will offset future (potential) repair costs.
That aside, so what if it costs more? No one proposed requiring the elimination of mirrors, just allowing for their replacement with cameras. It'll start as a feature on very high end cars, then optio
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Nobody before 1998 I suppose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And no, you 100% cannot couple electric motors together like that for emergency steering with no physical linkage. It doesn't work, never worked, and never will work because electric motors don't work like that AT ALL.
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They're just replacing hydraulic power assisted racks with electric.
Yeah, and it kind of sucks IMO. Fixing an electric steering column costs a fortune in comparison to hydraulic systems. Steering pump goes out? Cheap to replace, and cake to do yourself if you have basic mechanical skills. Electric steering goes out? For the 2006 Elantra I used to own, the motor was part of the steering column, and the entire column would have to be replaced - Hyundai won't sell you just the motor or controller. I jun
No (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
People do this anyhow with traditional mirrors: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/... [pinterest.com]
And before you laugh at me and blame southerners, I've seen similar myself in NYC.
If someone can be stupid, it means someone will. But for the rest of us with working brains...we don't drive without important safety features on our cars.
Could be good -- super vision, AR or image AI (Score:2)
Dutch Reach (Score:2)
Wing mirrors arenâ(TM)t just used when driving, but are also used for safely exiting the vehicle. Using the mirror as part of the Dutch Reach is an important way to avoid dooring people or losing the door to a passing car. Mirrors always work, with or without power.
Don't care, but... (Score:2)
Mirrors vs. cameras are not the major issue I see in visual safety at the moment. Rather lack of regular visibility due to particularly A-pillars has created giant blind spots right where I need to see to avoid pedestrians. Rear and passenger windows all too often are so small and obscured by headrests as to make the old "blind-spots" turn into "blind-swaths". I know most of these are driven by other safety concerns like roll-over survival, but I suspect that they are one of the contributors to the risin
Re: (Score:3)
Yup, I see this all the time when I have to drive my wife's Camaro. Damn thing's like driving in a cave, and the rear visibility is by far the worst of any car I've owned. But, she wanted a Camaro. Meanwhile, my pickup's windows extend above my head and halfway down my arm, and it's almost like being in a solarium. Having huge mirrors with fisheye spots in the corner is helpful too.
My number one concern. (Score:2)
Would be input/signal lag.
Every car camera system I've seen runs a few video frames behind "reality" and also sometimes dropped frames.
Sure, we're talking about a few hundredths of a second, which doesn't matter in a parking lot. But when you're on the highway at 70MPH, both of those are important, and can be the difference between hitting something and not.
Progressive glasses (Score:2)
I tried this during a test drive (rear-view mirror). It was so unusable I black-listed that car and anything with the same idea immediately.
When I look out the windshield, my eyes are focused at distance. Looking in a *mirror*, my eyes remain focused at distance.
Looking at a screen (in the same place as a rear-view mirror), my eyes have to first re-focus nearby, then re-focus *again* for distance. Did I mention I have progressive glasses, so it's almost impossible to focus nearby when looking straight or
Big Bad Mamma (Score:2)
Yes, with caveats. (Score:3)
I’m tall with a short inseam, so I duck down taking right hand curves, like most every on ramp, to see the road ahead the mirror is blocking. My rear views are a pan to adjust properly.
The added sensor fusion with hdr cameras, Ir cameras and after-market accessories like radar mapping plus archiving things like accident footage to potholes make it very useful. Headlights wouldn’t blind you either with hdr capable cameras, headlights could be inverted to dark spots. And ‘auras’ could be added to spotted items in the road or near the edge.
I’m available to consult if you want to chat near future tech.
Re: (Score:2)
That same Altima was likely drive by wire for gas and steering you realize...? (assuming this is relatively recent)