Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
When it's requires dealerships will have to add that to the direct competition package along with "takes you places" and "blinkers work." The price will drop accordingly.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
You can't see below a certain level without a camera.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
And every time I'm on the expressway, I wish I had a camera for my blind spots. When the government mandates cameras they will probably be like $200 to meet the standards. I'm not sure why automakers didn't think to add the cameras as a cool cheap safety feature. And the ones that do are only on when you are in reverse, so they don't help you with blind spots.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
most times I can't see you when using my mirrors. I'll look behind me in parking lots but idiots like to walk in the street in NYC
The article failed to mention that at least 12 pedophiles and 27 terrorist suspects will be saved each year by rear view cameras. Good laws put into action to save the peoples!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
First I was tempted to make a joke, something connecting rear- view and up-skirt with car analogy. But I won't do that, and instead say that, here in Japan rear view cameras has been fairly standard for a long time. My 11 year old car came with one that recently broke. And it is one of those things you don't miss until you had one and it is gone. We live in a neighborhood with lots of kids running around and playing on the small streets between the houses. And with the rear view camera I could be absolutely sure there were no toddler on a three wheeler behind my car when backing out.
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
This, as with all car safety laws, isn't a retrofit law. They aren't saying "You have to go buy this and put it on all cars out there." They are saying (or rather considering saying) "All cars made from now on must include this feature."
Same shit as passive safety systems, window mounted stop lights, seatbelts and so on. You needn't retrofit them on something that didn't have them, manufacturers just have to include them on new vehicles.
How did all of these accidents happen?
Would a camera have prevented it?
Or will we find new and exciting ways to get ourselves run over because we can't be bothered by our surroundings?
We should consider reducing the amount of silly, wasteful and frivolous laws on the books, before we add to the pile.
I think that front cover of this weeks' The Economist sums up my feelings quite well.
Am I the only one who has seen drivers with a rear camera hit something or someone because they looked ONLY at the camera and not at the mirrors or out the windows. I think that when more vehicles come with a standard backup camera, there will be more such incidents, not fewer.
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.
But I can see all around the blind spot without one, so if something diappears into it, I'll assume it might be there until I see it re-emerge. solved problem for the last 100 years of driving.
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 same people who ignore their mirrors, will ignore their rear view cameras as well.
In determining how much money should be spent preventing a death, it's useful to attach a dollar amount to a human life. The dollar amount says that after you've spent that much money on one life, you're probably better off spending money saving a different life (probably from a different danger). The usual amount is $1 or $2 million.
Assuming a car lasts 14 years before it's permanently retired, consider a block of 14 years. At 200 lives/year saved, that's 2800 lives saved. At 250 million cars in the US multiplied by $75/car for additional equipment, that's $19 billion. Divided by 2800, that's $6.7 million/life saved. Too much money -- and that's for cars that already have displays.
As just one example of where money would be better spent, and yes it's a pet peeve of mine, is installing a guard rail in the median of the Fairfax County Parkway. There are a handful of deaths from head-on collisions every year, and it would cost only $10 million to install a guardrail.
According to wardsauto.com, 13M cars and trucks were sold in 2011. At a cost of $200 each, that means it would cost $2.6B per year to add these cameras to every vehicle. Even if this would eliminate all 200 of the backup-related deaths each year (which it obviously wouldn't), that would mean spending $13M per life saved. This is far higher than the figure used in most engineering projects; i.e. this is not a good return per dollar on safety, and there are much more cost-effective ways to spend this money.
Last week, I borrowed a Honda Odyssey with a backup camera. The back of the vehicle was so coated with winter road garbage that you almost couldn't tell that the vehicle was sky blue. Nevertheless, the picture from the camera was quite good.
Breaking news: The guy who tries to upsell you at the car dealership has a tenuous grip in economics.
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
How about turning around and looking behind you before you back up?
The referenced articles all seem to refer to the blind spots that can occur when you depend solely on your mirrors for situational awareness. This is appropriate when you're on the highway, driving at a high rate of speed, and with all the other cars around you going in the same direction.
Presumably, you are not moving forward when you initiate backing up. That means there's plenty of time, and yes, an obligation, to turn around, look over your shoulder, and look directly for obstacles, especially other people, before and during the entire time you're moving backwards.
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.
Let's put some numbers to it as well. Annual car sales are about 6 million/year in the US. At a cost of $200/vehicle, that's a total incremental cost of $1.2B. That puts the "cost to save a life" at $1.2B/200 = $6 million per life saved, assuming that the backup cameras prevent every single death. I would posit that it's more likely to be half that effective at best, so $12M/live saved.
IMHO, such numbers put this proposal squarely in the same category as proposals to increase the required age/height/weight for children not to sit in booster seats--they result in a huge financial outlay by the public to offset a (statistically-speaking) relatively minor problem. The US sees about 2.4 million deaths per year. Two hundred is 8.3 thousandths of one percent of the death toll.
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
And if the person behind you is shorter than the peak of your trunk? Children can and do put themselves right behind cars, and some of them do get killed because of that.
While there may be a way to avoid this by combining a walk around the car before entering the car, with near-constant use of the mirrors from the moment you get in the car to the moment you finish reversing, the plain fact is that it is not easy to know if someone less than 3 feet tall is right behind you. I suspect most drivers have avoided hitting kids while backing up more out of luck than out of assiduous mirror-usage.
I don't often say it, but: think of the children!
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
I suspect the problem isn't lack of cameras but lack of people paying attention while driving (to whit I saw someone reading a book while making a left turn. great).
What? You want to blame people? You hateful, hateful person! No one is actually responsible for their own actions these days. Silly person...
my wife is disabled, and last time i checked she fitted just fine into an 88 corolla hatchback.
last time you checked, oooh zinger
because you know, every handicapped person is handicapped the same way
they are also the same size
arrogant asshat...
but, how many thousands die at the hands of drunk drivers each year? The breathalyzer mandate would be a tougher sell but save more lives. i guess you can sell cameras as "think of the children". The only thing that scares me on the road is the drunken idiots.
my wife is disabled, and last time i checked she fitted just fine into an 88 corolla hatchback.
Yes, all disabilities are exactly the same.
And public transport is not a viable option everywhere. For example, if you live in the country, where, coincidentally, F-150 are fairly popular.
I've never had cancer. Clearly cancer isn't a risk then.
They used to do this and people were getting killed left and right on the highways in accidents which today are easily survivable. For example, in the 1960s seat-belts were optional and not very common. My father had to specially order them for his cars because they were not standard. Collapsible steering columns, crumple zones, safety glass, etc. were all mandated because it cuts down on deaths and serious injury. I suspect having this feature will lower insurance costs, perhaps enough to cover the additional cost. Many of the safety features save money by lowering the cost of people in emergency rooms.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
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.
In the stupidly big vehicles lots of people drive these days,
Some are less big, but with large blind spots none-the-less. From a related article U.S. Rule Set for Cameras at Cars’ Rear:
Edmunds said some of the biggest blind spots are on passenger cars where the trunk has a high deck lid and the driver sits low to the ground. For the Cadillac CTS-V coupe, Edmunds measured a blind spot 101 feet long, compared with about 40 feet for minivans from Toyota and Honda.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
To follow up, this is mostly useful for seeing young children who would otherwise be below what I can see out the rear window. I also have found it useful when backing out since my dog will often move in back of the car (wanting to hop in the back for a ride). I also think this is useful for older drivers who find it difficult to turn their heads around to see behind them.
I imagine that most of these accidents are with young children behind cars since they can be difficult to find and don't necessarily know to get out of the way.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
i do not want to share a road with you.
simple. if you can't see all around you, don't fucking move until you can!
People make mistakes. So if I'm reversing out of a parking spot, and you walk behind my car, with lights clearly indicating that I'm reversing, and I hit you, you may have the law on your side, but I know it hurts you considerably more than it hurts me.
Especially if I move forward / backward over you a few times to make sure you can't sue me.
As looking at the source of the statistics just as many kids are harmed and killed by frontovers as well as backovers.
http://www.kidsandcars.org/userfiles/dangers/shared/non-fatal-pie-chart.pdf
http://www.kidsandcars.org/userfiles/dangers/shared/fatalities-pie-chart.pdf
Also, they should install a camera inside the car so parents don't forget to leave their kids in the car as 16% of kids are killed from Heat Stroke and over 50% are harmed from being left in the vehicle.
People back over other people because they aren't looking behind them
This is about sight lines. The problem it's trying to solve is backing up over someone who's too short & too close to be seen over the back of the car even if you *do* look in the mirror.
There are no laws that prevent you from doing this. You just have to keep those cars on your own private property instead of on the socialist roads that are provided to you for "the good of the whole".
We could easily solve this by privatizing all roads and making them toll roads and letting businesses decide if they require these safety features to allow you on their roadways.
I read about this on another newspaper site, and they cited the reason as specifically being child deaths - as children, particularly if they're not standing, are often too short to see in the rear-view mirror or over your shoulder.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
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.
Yeah, but no amount of technology will make them better drivers anyway.
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.
This, here in Australia drivers have a mortal fear of reverse parking despite the fact that it's safer. It's just that drivers are bloody lazy. I always reverse part, it's faster overall and safer. Plus what inevitably happens is my low profile Honda Civic gets boxed in by two massive Mum-Tank SUV's which I cans see past due to the high windows and illegal tint.
Add to this that it's near impossible to lose your license in Australia if you're over 22, six speeding fines, no problems. Never indicate, never fined. Lane discipline, schlane discipline. UK drivers always get a shock when they hit Aussie roads.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
But if they really want to reduce child deaths they should maybe look at other causes first, since this cause seems to be relatively insignificant compared to other causes. Of course it's easier to raise a "hidden" tax than to use actual tax money to invest in health care instead of say military. Or maybe some camera manufacturer has connections with some politician. Or maybe both. Or maybe I'm just paranoid.
On a related topic, many cars have a kind of radar which beeps when the back of the car is getting too close to an object (like a wall or a pole). Do these work with kids too? I would assume they are cheaper than cameras. Plus, they have the considerable advantage that they do not require visual attention, unlike the camera feedback.
but the public transit is awesome in NYC
No it's not if you're disabled. Unless you like walking five blocks to the subway, climbing four flights of stairs, walking another two blocks in transfers, another four staircases and then another five blocks when you get to your location. Or spending three hours on a bus and still having to walk five blocks to and from the bus.
Oh wait, you can't walk more than fifty feet? Well sucks to be you.
There's a reason NYC provides (read: is legally forced to provide) free shared van service for disabled people. It's slow as shit even by NYC standards but it's there for a reason.
I just re-aimed my rear window washer out behind my truck.
Have gnu, will travel.
Why could these only save 200 people, max? Will they be uninstalled from the car after the first year?
Beyond lives, I see potential in preventing "oopsie, I backed into a parked car"-type accidents, avoid just one of those over the life of the vehicle and the camera more than paid for itself.
I am not a sig.
But if they really want to reduce child deaths they should maybe look at other causes first, since this cause seems to be relatively insignificant compared to other causes. Of course it's easier to raise a "hidden" tax than to use actual tax money to invest in health care instead of say military.
One of our installers ran over and killed his 3 year old just two weeks ago. It would have been nice to have a camera, as th e child darted out of the house as the father was backing out. I know another fellow who killed his daughter that way thirty years ago.
I have a back up camera installed on my RV, along with a fresnel lens, and west coast mirrors. The back up camera is so inexpensive that it seems a crime to not require them. And I'm not even a safety first person
But here we are in 21st century America, where a no brainer like a requirement for backup cameras becomes a political issue like taxes. You've said your part, maybe next up will likely be someone saying that if people can't control their children, then don't make ME pay for it! I think that if we tried to mandate headlights today, someone would be complaining about "Those Damn socialists telling us how we're supposed to outfit our cars!"
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
> You're ignoring the costs of the emergency services to deal with an accident
You are right. I was ignoring a lof things. It is called a back of the envelope calculation, to see if a proposal passes the smell test. Take the most optimistic numbers from the article (almost certainly overcounting every minor injury to inflate the problem and seriously lowballing the price of the proposed solution) and Google up the one missing number (number of cars sold annually) to make a first run through. It failed. If you were expecting a detailed, exhaustive cost benefit analysis would be performed on the spot for the benefit of the mindless hordes on what passes for slashdot these days, who would mostly ignore it anyway if it disagreed with their preconceived notions of the majesty and infallibility of the State, you are delusional. Do the word 'perls before swine' ring any bells?
Bottom line, even if you are obsessed with safety and totalitarian enough to believe in ordering everyone else to implement your pet notions, there are thousands of better places to be a busybody do gooder where you save more lives per million of other people's money spent. If a billion dollars (and that is a ball park of the annual price tag) on cancer research couldn't save 200 lives I'd be really shocked. And yes it really does work that way, money seized and spent on this misguided project of government directed spending isn't available to be taxed and directly spent on research. Do the math. A billion dollars of research or save two hundred people who couldn't see the reverse lights or the new government mandated backup alarms and get out of the way. One or the other. We don't live in such prosperous times we can ignore economic reality any more, we live in an age of limits and can no longer afford to be stupid.
> But I suspect you already knew that and were just trolling.
No, the first post was simply being brief. THIS post is a troll. Please compare and contrast. Just so you will know the difference in the future.
Democrat delenda est
We know many drivers are idiots (I wonder sometimes if there's an idiot out there with my name on him). So providing technology which could marginally reduce their lethality in spite of themselves, would help the others who share the environment with them and their multi-ton rolling missiles.
Even the best drivers are subject to momentary foibles as well. Which, in a perfect storm, could result in a tragedy. Any technology which could mitigate the effect of these foibles would serve to reduce human pain and misery. Everything of course is subject to cost/benefit analysis, but IMHO, a couple of hundred bucks imposed on the individual which saves a couple of hundred fatalities and reduces tens of thousands of injuries would be well worth it.
I have a car with a rear backup sensor. I feel like this is better than a camera, because rather than having to interpret what I see visually on a small screen, I get a simplified display of objects anywhere around the rear of the car along with an audio alarm as things get closer to the bumper.
So I don't feel like mandating cameras is a good idea, when there are other possible technologies that could work as well or better.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Most RV cameras are wide angle lenses, and being mounted at the very rear of the car, they are in a position where they have a much better view of what is about to T-bone you than the driver seat with its view obscured by the truck, wall, etc you are parked next to.
Same shit as passive safety systems, window mounted stop lights, seatbelts and so on.
No, it isn't. A number of posters estimated that optimistic cases (i.e. where all deaths are prevented) will work out to $7-$12M/person. Without any analysis, I am going to guess that seatbelts have a much lower cost per life saved ratio
There are probably better ways to spend the money and save more human lives per $ million.
Preach!
Math, it really should be mandatory to vote.
Yes, them damn socialists are trying to tell us how to live. Her Do you know how much money has been laid out and wasted on this safety crap? Here e are a few more outrages that the leftist leaning panty waists are tryin' to ram down our throats:
1. Tail light brightness standards - Oh come on. Who has ever been injured by a tail light that was too dim.
2. Hood latches. Hood latches? Do you have any idea how much money is wasted on putting those secondary hood latches on every car? If one hood latch isn't enough, then lock the designer up and throw away the key!
3. Seat belts. I personally know 25 million people who were in a wreck, the car fell down a cliff, and they only survived because they were thrown from the vehicle. Seat belts are mandatory, and they don't do a darn thing except trap people. 5.And here is the biggest one of all. Baby seats. That's right folks. They didn't have baby seats when I was a young'un, and here I am. Total waste of money, coming out of MY pocket
Hang on - those damn kids are on the lawn again - gotta go......
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
$
Considering the number of deaths on the road (30k in 2009, down from 43k in 2005), you can hardly blame them for taking an active role in trying to reduce deaths.
Kind of makes Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorists attacks, the crack down in Syria, the violence in Mexico and almost anything else you can think of outside of Africa from the last decade look like nothing.
I've seen a video where a toddler stands in FRONT of a parked car and the front of the car is taller than the toddler so the driver couldn't see the toddler and ran over the toddler. The toddler's parents/guardians are mostly to be blamed in that incident. It was a moderately busy street not suitable for unsupervised toddlers.
The rear reversing sensors that come standard on many cars seem pretty good at detecting stuff. So why cameras for all cars? How many more would these cameras save compared to those sensors?
"In terms of absolute numbers of lives saved, it certainly isn't the highest," Mr. Ditlow said. "But in terms of emotional tragedy, backover deaths are some of the worst imaginable. When you have a parent that kills a child in an incident that's utterly avoidable, they don't ever forget it."
The Darwinists would be pretty happy:
And more than two-thirds of the time, a parent or other close relative is behind the wheel.
Maybe it's cheaper and just as effective to have these people and their victims appear in an ad telling parents and drivers to be more careful? e.g. "You don't want to be like me - someone who squished his own daughter".
The USA isn't as rich as it used to be, so it should seriously consider spending the money in more bang for buck stuff For instance fixing its education system - that would save more lives than these cameras.
When I was growing up, we had this happen to a family on the next street over. A two year old escaped the house unnoticed and thought it would be funny to hide behind daddy's car before daddy went to work. Daddy didn't see his son "hiding" behind the rear passenger side tire, because Daddy was not in the habit of making a complete circle around the vehicle in the driveway to check for debris and/or children prior to rolling out. Daddy was charged with accidental vehicular manslaughter. And his son was dead too. This technology didn't exist at the time, but that's one tragedy that could have been prevented right then and there.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
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.
It isn't the number of people that die that determines whether it is worthwhile, it is the cost/benefit ratio. Fortunately, TFA provides some of the needed information, but it doesn't seem very consistent.
"But regulators say that 95 to 112 deaths and as many as 8,374 injuries could be avoided each year by eliminating the wide blind spot behind a vehicle." (Compared to the 200/17000 numbers, it looks like they believe the cameras will about halve the number of accidents.)
"...regulators predicted that adding the cameras and viewing screens will cost the auto industry as much as $2.7 billion a year, or $160 to $200 a vehicle." Wikipedia says 5.5 million vehicles sold in USA in 2009. (I presume this is new sales only.) This would imply about $500 per vehicle to reach $2.7 billion.
"For the 2012 model year, 45 percent of vehicles offer a rearview camera as standard equipment." Is that 45% of vehicles sold, or 45% of models? If 45% of vehicles, then only 55% are going to have extra cost if the cameras are required.
Optimistic cost/benefit ratio: 112 deaths prevented per year, 55% of 5.5 million vehicles at $160 per vehicle = 484 million dollars per year = $4.3 million dollars to save one life and 75 injuries. (75=8374/112)
Pessimistic cost/benefit ratio: 95 deaths prevented per year at a cost of $2.7 billion per year = $28 million to save one life and a bunch of injuries.
(Note that the cost is up-front, but the benefit is spread out over the ~10 year lifetime of the vehicle, which makes the investment a little less attractive, but I'm not trying to account for this.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
You also run over less bikes that way. If you also kick the tires, look at the lights and (in winter) make sure your plates are clear...lot of hassle avoided simply by a quick loop around the vehicular before entry. Lazy man's circle-check.
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.
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.
Another example of legislation without a factual basis was the "headlights on all the time" mandated in the 1990s. Someone did a study and found that drivers who turned their headlights on in the daytime were far less likely to get into accidents. They confused correlation with causation and arrived at the wrong conclusion, that it was the headlights preventing accidents. In reality, headlights didn't change the accident statistics at all, but cost us millions of barrels of oil powering them all. What they really learned was that a person who voluntarily takes actions for their own safety are far less likely to get in accidents. "Headlights on for safety" was only a side effect of a careful driver.
It's also why Volvos are such "safe" cars. Someone has to be pretty desperately concerned for their safety before buying something that ugly. :-)
However, in this case, I have to agree with the backup cameras directly adding to safety. Every new car I've sat in for the last few years has had high side and rear windows, and poor lines of sight to close-up obstacles. Our new car has a backup camera, and there is simply no comparison in terms of visibility. The lens doesn't show too much peripheral vision, however, so it also has ultrasonic detectors that pick up motion and warn of external objects approaching from the rear sides. These also add to safely backing out of perpendicular parking spots, which are especially problematic when stuck beside a giant blind spot created by an SUV, truck, or van. I can't tell how many actual accidents they've prevented in the past year, because they probably would have been avoided by traditional means (sight, brakes, honking, flipping of fingers, etc.) but I know I've had no accidents when using them.
I've also been involved in a dual rear-end collision in a parking lot. My little pickup met a Mercedes Benz at about 4-5 MPH. I had checked over my shoulder before moving, and was backing out using the mirror, and the car in the slot opposite mine was simultaneously backing out and was hidden from my line of sight below the level of the tailgate. We both were backing our tails out to the west, so each of us entered the other's mirror blind spot almost immediately. Turns out the final score was steel bumper: 0, engineered crumple zones: -$$$$. While no lives were threatened, a backup camera would have saved both of us from having to deal with a collision that cost far more than any camera system on the market.
John
Suppose that these cameras could prevent half of all backup deaths.
TFA says that 200 people are killed by backover accidents, so that's saving a hundred lives a year.
TFA also gives a range for the cost of these things. Let's take $200, since we all know government tends to underestimate cost.
Per Wikipedia, 5.5 million cars are sold this year. Multiplying, that means that mandating these cameras on all of them will cost about a billion dollars.
I guarantee you that you can save a lot more than a hundred lives if you spend a billion dollars on any number of other things (diabetes education, suicide prevention and mental illness care, cancer screenings for the poor, medical research in general, take your pick).
I was impressed with the camera on my parents Camry but the cameras still don't cover the entire car. The driver still needs to check the mirrors to make sure the lil'uns aren't coming down the sidewalk and are about to walk behind the car. It's an improvement, but the fear that people will solely rely on them is a problem. It's the same with the new sensors for blind spots on the side of the car...they can detect a cars presence, but are not as good at detecting motorcycles.
The idea of "you should learn to be a better driver" doesn't work in practice. A disturbingly large number of drivers are mentally the equivalent of children who are baffled by a parent playing peek-a-boo, yet most of them are issued drivers licenses anyway. Unless you're going to revamp the driver's license system to be biannually test-based, like pilot's licenses, hoping for them to improve is a fool's hope. So any tool you put in their stupid hands that makes the world a tiny bit safer for the rest of us is a good thing.
It'd be different if they only risked their own lives, but in this case they're only risking the lives of others. Darwin's theory doesn't help us out with this problem.
And not only is that base assumption wrong, but his statement fails utterly to take history into account: 100 years of driving has created a new category of fatality rate bested only by our improvements in weapons and war. "Solved problem for the last 100 years of driving" is simply false. It's really a new problem created by the last 100 years of driving.
John
If they could design the camera to replace the rear view mirrors on both sides of the car they would save more than $200 in gas over the life of the car so even at that price they would pay for themselves. If they could eliminate the blind spot for changing lanes I would think they would save more than 200 people a year. Lets look at motherboards for computer. There have been a number of devices that one had to purchase that are now standard on a motherboard Sound cards and network adapters are just two. Both of them are basically free now. I would think the same for this camera's monitor as it will probably have other uses too. GPS system for instance. When a monitor is standard in every car, it could be used instead of the idiot lights we now use. It could now display low oil pressure stop car before you burn the engine up idiot. I believe there will be many more uses for that monitor than just the back up camera and it will save more money than we will pay for it.
Cars are not a "right". They have to integrate with the rest of the transportation system on a giant grid of shared roads. If they aren't integrating properly, they should not be permitted to be in the system at all. Safety is just one attribute they need to have.
If it were just your car in just your driveway, fine. Back up around your property all you want, drive around it blindfolded, I don't care. And if this was something that affected only your personal safety, and not that of other people, I wouldn't care either. If you don't want to pay for a car with a driver's side airbag, and would rather die in a head-on collision, I'm all for it. Sayonara, cheapskate. But when you are on the public roads, you damn sure better play well with the other drivers. That means a vehicle that minimizes the risks to the rest of us.
If the cost of these keep the price of cars unaffordably high to 0.001% of people, and makes them take buses instead, I'm good with that. I'd rather have you on a bus than driving a piece of shit that's not safe, and endangering me and my friends with it.
John
So, you cannot imagine a scenario where the child enters the blind spot, therefore there is zero risk of it happening? Have you ever heard of these buildings called "garages"? They consist of opaque walls that shield the view of the driver from objects and persons entering the driveway from their sides. Have you never been in a parking stall next to a large vehicle that similarly blocks your line of sight to the side, and can you not imagine small children darting from behind them to behind your vehicle?
I've observed poorly-attended children running in parking lots; a child can sprint at 10MPH and can cross the one foot gap between parked cars in 70 milliseconds. The average human reaction time is somewhere around 200 milliseconds. There is literally no chance of avoiding striking the child in this worst case scenario, yet it's still 100% the fault of the driver.
It would horrify me to cause harm to someone in an accident that is easily preventable through technology. And to live with the guilt knowing that I could have spent the cost of a few nice meals out to prevent it? I should hope you have enough humanity that it would similarly disturb you.
John
What an absurd statement. There are all kinds of flashing lights and gates that raise and lower at railroad crossings. Probably billions are spent on installing and maintaining them every year.
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.
You think safety equipment increases the overall costs of transportation? The medical bills, liability lawsuits, and lost productivity of vehicle injuries are incredibly expensive. And pro-safety measures of all sorts have been extremely effective.
On the other hand, kids of that age should not be out on the street on their own. They should be supervised by their parents or another responsible adult. While i certainly wouldn't want to run over a small child, and like you take precautions not to, it would still ultimately be negligence on the part of the parents if it happened.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Can you see on the ground directly behind your rear wheel? I thought not. A small child lying down to reach something, or fallen down, is way way below any site line from the drivers seat, no matter if you swivel your head 360 degrees and use all three mirrors. You would have to work the side mirror controls extensively; even then it's very dubious you could cover all approaches; and by the time you'd examined all achievable areas, there would have been plenty of time to miss things in the areas your mirrors weren't pointing.
Unless you are staring at ALL approaches to the blind areas 100% of the time (good luck driving), there is a risk someone or something can enter it without your noticing.
I've been driving for over 30 years, and have yet to back up into someone. Why should I have to pay for your inability to drive???
.. and somehow I end up paying more???
.. pay for it. If a car dealer wants to offer it as standard equipment, go for it.
Of course, this is from a country that now has ordered a private business to give a product away for free. That is, ordered insurance companies to cover birth control without any co-pay. Why no co-pay? Because it's so cheap to begin with ($20-$50/month). When do I get my free drugs for conditions that aren't voluntary, like my glaucoma meds that cost me over $100/month with insurance??? But get some special interest group together (like maybe people who make backup cameras and birth control pills???), and suddenly a government mandate shows up.
I'm really getting tired of the federal government deciding what is best for others, and making me pay for it. Sure, it only costs $200. Now, add on anti-lock brakes, 5mph bumpers (which don't work), and a host of other things that the government has mandated 'for your own good', and the cost of just the government mandates for a car probably easily adds another 3 or 4 thousand dollars to the price. Pretty soon those little lights on mirrors that detect someone in your blind spot will be required. Isn't it interesting that people will buy those things that want them anyway, but for some reason the government decides that people that don't want to pay for them have to have them anyway
Enough already. I'll put up with the pollution stuff, since there is an effect on everyone. But seat belts, safety mirrors, and the rest?? If you want it
But the government requiring backup cameras is just going too far. If you are so stupid that you can't look behind you and make sure where your kids are, buy one. If a parent is so stupid they let their kids run around parking lots or down streets without watching them, maybe evolution does work.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
My "inability" to drive? Based on the fact that I support vehicles with high tech driver aids? lol!
Now, let's get to the real question: Why should I have to wait for you to back over someone's kid before it occurs to you that it would actually be better if you could see what is behind you? Further, why would you resist an inexpensive technical innovation that empowers you?
Oh, I see what your problem is. Comprehension. Let me spell it out for you: Even if we were to stipulate that a driver might know where their kids are; that doesn't mean they know where all kids are, or where all pets are, or where all old ladies that have fallen on the ground behind the vehicle are, etc..
So here's my answer for you: You need to be made to pay for this because you have publicly demonstrated that you fail to make correct decisions on your own -- not just any old decision, but decisions that affect the safety of others. Thanks. You've single-handedly justified why safety equipment is often mandated, and not optional.
Seat belts have an effect on everyone -- society ends up paying for your injuries in various forms and by various means, so the more severe they are, the more everyone else pays. They also serve to keep others in the car safer, even if you choose not to wear them.
Mmmm-hmmm, because all kids are dependably watched 24/7 by their parents, and always obey them, and always do the right thing, yes? When has that ever been true in human history? If it's true at your house, all I can say is I pity your children, but hey, at least you're already invested in cameras, right?.
And by the way, evolution works, all right, but the truth is that evolution is a very crude process that optimizes for survival, not for good. Einstein was a mind-somewhere-else, self-involved human being. Evolution is very unkind to such folks. It does not follow that it would be a good thing if he, or any other daydreaming or distracted kid, were run over by the likes of you.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
By "looking over both shoulders", do you mean "behind you"?
> you have no guarantee
What guarantee is there that the driver will be monitoring the camera display?
Holy non-sequitur Batman. Actually, insurance companies generally like giving out contraception because it saves them money overall. Giving someone contraception is cheaper than covering them through pregnancy and raising children. All this "mandate" does is prevent businesses from asking for a plan for their employees that stops the insurance companies from doing something they already want to do.
Well, for one thing, because there's no way you can get all the idiots off the road. Americans treat driving as a birthright, no matter how bad they are at it. Either have extensive, mandatory driver's training and strict road tests to keep the morons out from behind the wheel, or build some basic safety measures into every car.
Now as others have pointed out, this issue boils down to sight lines. Even if you look for them there are places where children can stand around a vehicle where they simply cannot be seen by the driver, period. Camera and display technology has gotten so cheap, that it doesn't make sense not to do this. $200 is almost nothing on the price of a new car. It's 2% of the cost on a $10K econobox. Do they even make cars that cheap any more?
And a funny thing happens when you make something like this mandatory -- it gets cheaper! Economies of scale and such.
I really think you're tilting at windmills here, Mr. Quixote.
Program Intellivision!
This is about sight lines. The problem it's trying to solve is backing up over someone who's too short & too close to be seen over the back of the car even if you *do* look in the mirror.
I have an easier solution to this problem. If you're that short, and behind a running vehicle, get out of the way!
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Ok, so a child runs out behind your car and you knock them over, killing or severely injuring them. Do you hop out, shout at the parents about "Darwin Awards" and carry on with your day? If you do, you're a sociopath and probably shouldn't be put in a position of authority over anyone. I know one person who tried to kill themself four times because they hit a child, despite it not being their fault. I can't fault your logical argument, but the world isn't always logical.
;)
Offtopic; I like your sig. It's like an EULA; Complete rubbish. If the discussion were a court case, the verdict would be "No contest" and the other party would win. So yes, by you not refuting any points, made they win the argument. At least as far as your part in it is concerned.
No, I don't expect a reply.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/