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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.'"
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.
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.
Most configurations of the Toyota Sienna minivan now have the backup camera standard and the price has not increased significantly from the last model-year that offered it only as an option. This indicates that the price difference in other vehicles is much more of a "convenience charge" than the cost of the system. If it is in every vehicle, there will be no added convenience and therefore nothing to charge for.
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
> And every time I'm on the expressway, I wish I had a camera for my blind spots.
You're doing it wrong. Seriously, when you mirrors are _properly_ configured in a car you should NOT have ANY blind spots.
Angle your mirrors out more. You should be able to track a car in your rearview mirror, to your side mirror, to the right/left WITHOUT moving your head.
Most people "toe in" their mirrors WAY too much, which means they need to move forward to see "more." This is inefficient, lazy, and just bad (as in accident prone.)
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.
I second this. A lot of people bring their mirrors in until they can see the sides of their own car -- this is effectively useless and the complete opposite of what you want to do. As soon as someone slapped me up side the head and told me to adjust my mirrors properly a whole new world opened up. Not only do I not have a blind spot I actually recalibrate my mirrors (after the wife cranks 'em in) by making sure that as the cars next to me transition from the rear-view to side-view to the out-the-window-view I can see them in both the before and after views simultaneously.
Second most useful thing I've ever learned...
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
Well, at least the obese ones have an excuse for the over-sized SUV. Ever see a fat person getting out of a smart car? It's like watching a cell divide.
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.
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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.
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.
how do you see past the passenger seat, genius?
you must turn your head. i'm not sure how it is in the land of the free, but where i'm from when you want to turn or change lanes, the instructors give you the mantra "mirror, signal, headcheck, move".
as in, first you check the mirror, then you use the turn signal (lot of people miss this one), then you actually turn your head around and look where you're going so you can confirm there's nothing in the blind spot that you DO have no matter where you point your mirrors. when all is clear, then you move.
the fact that people don't even believe they have blind spots makes me not want to drive on public roads anymore.
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. . . .
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.
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.
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
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Just like GP says: on most cars, with the mirrors properly adjusted, a vehicle exiting the field of view of the rear-view mirror will simultaneously cross into the side mirrors, and exit the side mirrors as it enters your peripheral vision. A quick sideways glance may be required to pick it back up at this point, but in most cases it should be nearly alongside you once it's out of the mirrors (this is not strictly true in, say, a convertible with the top up, but it still holds in most cases). This isn't to discount the importance of a good long look before changing lanes, but generally, you should be able to have constant 360-degree situational awareness without craning your neck around the B-pillars.
As previously mentioned, most drivers set their mirrors such that the wing mirrors are completely redundant with the center mirror, and don't cover any of the bind spots that they should be. Here's a great how-to on properly adjusting your mirrors from Car and Driver.
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.
confirm there's nothing in the blind spot that you DO have no matter where you point your mirrors
Actually, with the SAE recommended method (Google: adjust mirrors sae ) there's NO blind spot requiring a look over the shoulder as the rear of the vehicle next to you is still visible in the side mirror. That said, a *really* short car - or motorcycle - it may not be visible unless you turn your head to the side, but there's no need to look over your shoulder. Obviously, this adjustment method requires three mirrors.
Still you're absolutely correct that double-checking should *always* be done.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Technically I could do this, but it's a distraction. If I can't see the side of my own car, then when I look in the mirror I have no frame-of-reference for what I'm looking at. Yes, I guess I can deal with this, but it makes me very unsure while driving. I suspect a great many people are like me in this regard - it's very distracting not to be able to see the side of the car, since you have no real idea what you're looking at or where.
And as you say - since what you see changes based on how you position your head, having a "floating" frame of reference in the mirror means you can never be entirely sure you're see all the important spots.
Even if you do have your mirrors angled right, you'll still have blind spots.
That said - there's nothing wrong with turning your head and looking into those blind spots.
When I was taught to drive, the first thing my instructor did was park up round the corner of my house and showed me how to angle the mirrors. He told me to describe what I could see. Then he told me to look over my right shoulder at the fence behind me. One of the large panels had graffiti on it - which I couldn't see in any of the three mirrors I had. That lesson, out of all them has stuck with me the most.
No - I don't think these cameras will do what they say they will do. I'm not even sure they will save that many of the 17k accidents from occurring because in my experience these accidents are caused by people who aren't paying attention. If they aren't paying attention their mirrors and turning round to look in their blind spots - what makes you think that they will pay attention to a screen on their dash?
It's funny you mention obesity.
I can't find the article that was dicussing this, but one of the reasons for making back up cameras mandatory
is that really people literally cannot turn around far enough to look over their shoulder while backing up.
The same goes for elderly drivers, as they no longer have the range of motion to look behind them while seated.
America is getting older and fatter.
Back up cameras will make cars safer.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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.
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.
$
I for one, am very interested in Tata's
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
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.
Why do I have to buy one because you want one? How about if you want one, YOU buy one and leave me the hell alone.
More targets for your angst:
air bags, turn signals, High and low beams, secondary hood latches, center brake lights, brake lights, child restraint seats, removing hood ornaments, crumple zones. tipover fuel line cutoffs, lap seat belts, shoulder belts, reverse lock-outs, rear view mirrors, side lights Gas tank connection isolation. Safety testing, collapsible steering wheels, non-metallic soft dashboards, laminated windshields, tempered rear and side windows, side beams, roll cages, Bumper heights.
Why should you have to pay for any of this stuff? You won't ever need any of it if you aren't in an accident.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
what idiot lets their toddler out in the driveway alone to wave goodbye to someone?
They're called "toddlers" because they know how to "toddle", i.e. walk around by themselves. That means that all it takes is you looking away from them for 5 seconds and they could be behind the Canyonero before you look back.
if the kid is too young to not know that standing behind a backing up car is dangerous, he's too young to be out running around by himself and it's 100% the fault of whoever is supposed to be watching them.
You're right -- but blaming the grieving parents for their 5 seconds of inattention won't bring their dead child back, or save the next one either. In particular if your solution is to demand that parents never make a mistake, ever -- well, that's not a solution at all, it's just a way to make yourself feel better by blaming someone else.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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).
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
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
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.
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.