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Rear-View Cameras On Cars Could Become Mandatory In the US
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."
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.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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.
Ban them, and no more problem.
blah.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
... that a company that manufactures cameras is on a lobbying spending spree?
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
"proposal was designed to keep drivers from running over pedestrians who might be crossing behind their vehicles"
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.
Cameras aren't necessary - mildly enhancing the standard ultrasonic parking sensors would address this problem for a fraction of the cost.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
I watched my sister-in-law in a vehicle with a camera shortly after she bought it. 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. Took her three tries to back out of our neighbor's crowded driveway with no success. Then her sister's husband did it first try. He just looked out of the damned window. Newsflash - the camera has a limited field of view. The difference is that if you turn your head to look, you've probably got a better chance to see what may be outside of the camera angle, or moving into it.
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...
meep
Stop mandating this crap. I don't want traction control in my car, I don't want more screens, I don't want want my car to drive itself, and I don't want my car to disable cellphones.
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?
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.
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
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yea, it's ridiculous that people are too stupid to understand that if you're two feet off someone's bumper doing 80 mph, you are NOT going to be able to stop in time. I'd say there's at least a good half a dozen times a year where I see 3-6 car pileups on the side of the road because they're all idiots tailgating and then the person in front hits the brakes for some reason, then *BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM*. The worst part is, those same idiots will go out and get in the same wreck a few months later.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
If we trimmed the fat, most lawmakers' and regulators' heads would collapse.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
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.
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
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).
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.
You can bet that someone in congress is getting money from someone who manufactures backup cameras. Simple as that.