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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."
Yes this mirror is illegal in the us:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=drivers-med-rearview-mirror-sans-bl-2009-01-19
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 ----
You cannot "outlaw" stupidity. Why not take it to the next level and put everyone in inflatable suits when they drive, pack them in egg cartons. If people would take more responsibility, they wouldn't be backing over the family dog, a skateboard, fire hydrants or their kids. You know what will happen if/when they put this into play. The first person that hits something while backing up will have a hoard of lawyers knocking down their door to file a class action lawsuit.
... that a company that manufactures cameras is on a lobbying spending spree?
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
Seems kinda stupid to me. Car makers overcharge for the things already. Consumer Reports just did some article about how big the blind spot in cars is and depending on model and driver height it varies between 6 and 150+ feet (for spotting a toddler).
So how about either mandating a better view out the back of the car, or only requiring then on cars where the blindspot is over 15 feet for an average height person?
Better ideas for cutting down on deaths: bigger bumpers, lower speed limit (like 45), tougher driving tests, taking away licenses more aggressively, mandating disc brakes (probably more effective at safety), or just some public safety commercial. Those would probably all be more effective at saving lives.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
"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
It will probably end up adding $20 to the cost of an automobile costing tens of thousands, make the world a safer place, reduce nuisance collisions, make the next generation of drivers able to assume that they will be there where they expect them (no surprises)...
How much did it cost to add dual circuit brakes to every car? How many deaths due to outright break failure per year would there be otherwise... I'd bet fewer than the back-overs.
And maybe you'd like to save a few bucks and not have seat belts in your car too?
We're all in this together. It's called progress... Things advance to the point where a majority of us agree that that will be the new normal and we spec it out and move on. You'll get the benefits whether you like them or not.
Pat
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. The computer's technology can measure how far away the other car is and overlay it on the screen. Then, hit a button on your dashboard, it sends the video (with a capture of his license plate, if he's got one) off to the police and they mail him a ticket. If enough people catch the same person doing it, fuck'im, take his license away and force him to take the bus.
On a more cheerful note, there is another use that Jeremy Clarkson recently suggested on Top Gear -- looking at pretty girls in the car behind you while sitting at a traffic light. Lech-o-matic!
The government should very well be allowed to mandate safety devices in cars. They help save lives often without a lot of cost. It also doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can require a feature on new cars and then slowly as wear and tear takes its natural course nearly all cars will have the feature. So the real questions are:
1) What is it going to cost in a new car to implement? Real cost, not bullshit cost. How much will it actually raise the price for the consumer?
2) What kinds of savings does it generate in terms of lives, injuries, and property damage? That will be more of an estimate of course but you can still do some studies to determine it fairly accurately.
Now for these particular devices I don't know, I've done zero research so I'm in no position to say if they are worth it or not. However it is silly to suggest that the government shouldn't be able to introduce new safety standards, or that it would require getting all new cars. All that needs to be done is a good cost/benefit analysis of the idea. If it turns out to be worth the cost, then it can be required for new cars.
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?
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
Someone doesn't run over grandpa because he isn't visible enough, they run over grandpa because they ~aren't looking~ (small children may be another story, below the FOV when backing up). If someone isn't looking, this device isn't miraculously going to turn them into a good driver.
Even if you could realize all the proposed lives saved, 292 deaths is less than 1% of automotive fatalities in a year (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year). Of course, automakers aren't going to fight this too much, since everyone has to play ball/raise prices, and having the in-dash monitor is an immediate point for feature up-sells such as GPS.
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
The 'flat mirror' requirement would rule out a 'no side mirror' vehicle with cameras on both sides.
A modded Honda Impact (for a high mileage contest) included the replacement of both side mirrors with small, low aerodynamic drag, cameras and LCD monitors just inside the side windows where drivers would expect to view the mirrors. According to the guy at the auto show I spoke to (sorry, can't find a link) the drag reduction is measurable at freeway speeds.
captcha: illegal
Have gnu, will travel.
Instead of spending time on useless things like this, they should really focus on making it a legal requirement that cars drive themselves. I think more lives would be saved if human error was removed from the equation. They are talking about saving 292 lines per year? This is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of lives you would save if all cars drove by themselves. According to this link, there are about 100,000 traffic fatalities per year... If you want to make a law, why not focus on ones that might halve the number of traffic fatalities... Saving 292 people who didnt look back when they were putting their car in reverse is such a random useless thing to talk about. Making a law to "fix" this "problem" is ridiculous. If cars were forced to drive by themselves, so many other problems would be solved. DUI would not exist, all the "using a cell phone while driving" laws would immediately become irrelevant.
I'd like them to focus on less obvious deaths. I bet you could spend a couple hundred grand in factories and save hundreds of lives (or 1000s of additional healthy years).
There are cheaper ways to save lives. $20 * 8,000,000(cars sold per year) to save 300 * 50%? lives isn't exactly the best we can do. It puts the value of a saved human life at 1 million USD. Guarantee it can be done more cheaply. If saving lives were honestly the only factor then they'd have done a study on 'how to save lives cheaply' rather than one about cars. I bet subsidizing condoms would save more lives. I bet there are a million things that could be done for 1/1000th the cost.
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
If you're going to force us to have something installed on every single car made, why not a far simpler, cheaper backup system that they have on some cars already that beeps when you are backing up and get close to something, Aliens style? It will be ignored (or not) by as many people who would not be looking at a video screen either.
If they install a mandatory backup camera and make me put a video screen in my dash, I swear I'm going to drive backwards everywhere I go and just drive by the screen.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I would think it would cost more than that. They also have to figure out how to make it at least somewhat inconspicuous. It is okay for everyone to see your big ugly camera when you are paying extra for it, but when it is government mandated, everybody will have one and so people won't want them to be visible. Most cars still do not have a video screen, either, so they will all have to be upgraded to have one.
This is another example of the skyrocketing price of cars. In 1970, the cost of a new car was about 1/3 of the median household income, and most families only had one car. Now, the cost of a new car is more than 1/2 the median household income, and most families have 2 to 3. I'm surprised people are able to get by. I can make it because I have a 11 year old car, but I know lots of people that have two or more late model vehicles. I guess they are just leveraged to the hilt.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
You need a monitor to watch it on too... Either way it is less effective and more expensive than following trucks' lead and having a loud beeping noise.
... software scales pretty well. Lol...
Also
You can bet that someone in congress is getting money from someone who manufactures backup cameras. Simple as that.
You've assigned zero economic value to the avoided accidents in which somebody didn't die. These include both the medical cost and lost productivity of non-fatal pedestrian injuries, as well as the cost of the bumper-to-bumper physical damage. I'd bet that once that's included, you'd actually come out way ahead with this. Heck, bumper repair alone might be enough to make this work, depending on what the new backing-up accident rate becomes.
That written, my bet is that the biggest problems facing pedestrians who are being backed up upon are poor visibility common in SUVs and drivers who've forgotten that operating a many thousand pound vehicle requires full attention and two hands.
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