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Rearview Car Cameras Likely Mandated By 2014
Hugh Pickens writes "Every year around 17,000 people are injured and over 200 die in backover accidents involving cars, trucks and SUVs. Now the Chicago Tribune reports that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will send Congress a proposal mandating a rearview camera for all passenger vehicles starting in 2014. 'Adoption of this proposal would significantly reduce fatalities and injuries caused by backover crashes involving children, persons with disabilities, the elderly and other pedestrians,' says NHTSA in its proposal. But the technology won't come cheap. In its study, the NHTSA found that adding a backup camera to a vehicle without an existing visual display screen will probably cost $159 to $203 per vehicle, shrinking to between $58 and $88 for vehicles that already use display screens. Toyota of Albany Sales manager Kelvin Walker says he believes making backup cameras standard on cars made after 2014 is a good idea. 'If you want to get a backup camera with a mirror in it now, it may cost you $700 to $800 as an additional dealer option or you have to purchase a navigation which is about $1,500 to $1,600. So $1,600 compared to $200? You do the math.'"
I already know how to back up? Look for people and objects that are behind me and know how to avoid them? Do *I* still havbe to pay extra fora car with a feature I'll never need?
And what about heatproof, waterproof, sun/age embrittlement of the screen and button? Guess what, some of us live in climates with actual temperature extremes and cracked dashboards are a way of life in older cars. Do those cameras and display screen hold up, or do I just replace them regularly (at a nice tidy profit for the dealer and manufacturer) as the environmental wear kicks in?
And then there are the insurance liabilities. If I have a camera and it doesn't work, am I now automatically at fault, even when it was the otherguy that ran behind the car?
Just not loving this as a requirement.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Well you would only have to pay attention the the rear-view cam when backing up. When driving the screen usually show GPS/Media player controls or whatever. I have had a car with a rear cam for a long time, and I never had to wipe mud or junk from it. I do wash my car every now and then, but not too often.
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
The other thing, is that the factory installed ones are f*cking awesome for parallel parking. Mine displays an overlaid range indicator on the display. Anyone, even a valet not familliar with the car, can back it up to within a couple of inches of a bumper or car behind it. I ordered the option on a whim, but I'll never get another one without it.
Preach!
Math, it really should be mandatory to vote. Google sez we sell about 16 million cars annually. At the minimum price mentioned of $58 per car that works out to $929 million. Now ASSume it cuts that 200 deaths to zero (it won't) and that works out to what per life? Uh huh. For 4.6M per there are a lot more cost effective ways to save lives. Oh, but there are also people injured. Ok, go that math. For over 50K per injury that is still pretty fracking expensive. And I'd bet good money that a fair chunk of that 17,000 didn't get hurt very badly, perhaps a broken bone. Again assuming a rear camera would cut that number to zero, which it won't.
Democrat delenda est
Wouldn't a proximity sensor be a much better solution? I think they're cheaper, and they can yell at you if something/someone is in the way, much harder to ignore than a blob on the screen.
horror vacui
I've driven a Prius with a backup camera for three years now. The view is generally good in all conditions. The only real problem is when it rains heavily, you can get a single raindrop hanging from the lens (the lens is tiny) and blocking much of the view.
But then, the rear-view mirror still works.
Well you would only have to pay attention the the rear-view cam when backing up.
This is the problem. People back over other people because they aren't looking behind them (OK, there are accidents, but 9 times out of 10 it's because some idiot just drives out without checking over their shoulders and mirrors).
What make the lawmakers think that people will use RV camera's instead. It's not very useful as most RV cameras only show what is directly behind you, not what is going to T-bone you as you jet out without looking.
FTA
17,000 people are injured and over 200 die in backover accidents
That's a death rate of 1.1% of accidents. That's a pretty good survival rate for car accident.
Wouldn't this time/money be better spent on better driver education? I mean if someone backs out without checking their mirror/shoulders, they'll back out without using the camera too.
I have to ask, how many accidents are when Bob's wife backs over Bob's little toe at 2 KPH and all Bob has is an owie? Bob has to list that as a car accident if he wants an X-Ray for his toe.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Here in the UK, drivers are taught to reverse from the road into a driveway (or from a major road into a minor one when manoeuvring) and then drive out forwards. This means you're going the more dangerous way around (backwards) into the quieter area rather than the busier one, you have a better view of the busier area to choose when to complete your move, and usually you can concentrate on looking one way into a driveway/road you're reversing into instead of both.
A fair proportion of drivers actually do this, but you see a disturbing number of people who will just drive straight forward into a space in a car park by the shops, only to reverse back out later into a "road" where there are often other vehicles manoeuvring, pedestrians walking past close to vehicles where they can be hard to see, people wheeling stuff around on their way to their car, kids running off, and so on. Then they act all surprised when they back out and miss something. So, score one for better driver education.
Having said that, I would love to have better parking assistance with my car. It's a great vehicle, but the one big downer about modern safety design with curves everywhere is that it's much harder to judge how close you really to nearby hazards when manoeuvring in tight spaces. Similarly, all those crumple zones and such are great, but they do mean that rear windows tend to start higher up these days and obviously I can't see through solid bodywork to know how close I've got to that wall/post/child behind my car. In any case, whichever way you look, there's always a region near the ground you can't see from the driver's seat. So, score one for technology that allows careful drivers a better view around their vehicle as well. It's not like this vs. driver training is an either-or thing, when things like choosing to reverse in the safer direction only take ten seconds to teach and half a minute more to justify why.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Put some more numbers to it: in the 80s it was calculated that those high rear taillights (in the middle of a car) would prevent 50% of accidents. Later they recalculated it's a lot closer to 5%. Rearview cameras will get dirty & will prevent some people from using their own eyes in some cases. Who benefits? Probably somebody has a ton of shitty old TFT resistive panels left to unload, or some other ulterior motive that will come out years from now.
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I used to think this till I tried moving the mirrors out so I couldn''t see the side of my car. No loss of reference. At all. The mirror is a small surface area which is supposed to be showing you dynamic information - cars moving around you. The side of your car is static information. Completely unnecessary information taking up precious mirror space. You get a tremendous amount of reference information from the roadway markings and the movements of the cars around you. And now you've maximized the amount of useful information (cars moving around you) that you're getting from your mirrors.
I have a pretty big SUV. There was an interesting segment I saw once were they had not one, but an entire kindergarten class stand in front of that model. From inside the car, you couldn't see any of them. For that reason, I always walk around my car if there are small children known to be in the vicinity. Sometimes I do it anyway just out of habit. 10 seconds of inconvenience to spare me a lifetime of guilt if I run over someone's kid? Yeah, I'm willing to take the time.
I was surprised that my midsize sedan has as poor rearward visibility as a large SUV:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/car-safety/car-safety-reviews/mind-that-blind-spot-1005/best-and-worst/0304bli0_best-and-worst-rear-blind-zones.htm
I'm also amazed parallel parking, a car behind me can practically disappear in the blind spot, making it very difficult to judge distances. I retrofitted a reverse camera. $75 or so from Amazon.
What I find criminal is that school busses aren't equipped with reverse cameras. Due to dead-end streets many routes require a backup-turnaround, and busses have a much larger rear blindspot than a car. The safest approach in this scenario is to backup AFTER picking up students, and BEFORE dropping off students. However you never know when a late child might be running for the bus. In many districts if a bus has to backup on school property there must be a spotter. There's cameras recording the students actions inside, but a simple $100 system can look behind the bus.
Let's say you have young children.
Would you spend say 100 dollars on something that might be of some help to avoid you killing one of them? Even if the odds weren't all that high that you would kill them?
I might want to, but for making laws, we should look at cost per life. However, GGP overlooks everything but deaths, so his post is worse than useless.
Car seats. Not all that many children were killed by auto accidents. Yet we require them to be belted in. No one alive today who is older than 30 grew up using a car seat.
I'm 31 and grew up with a car seat. I grew up in Europe, which might explain the difference.