Nope.
My back-up camera does not replace my use of mirrors, but I find it to be an excellent supplement in many instances. For example, there are usually cars street-parked on both sides of my driveway, often making for a narrow exit path. The side mirrors are actually better at judging the gap, but at the same time, the camera alerts me to passing traffic, pedestrians, etc. while I’m concentrating on threading the needle.
The camera is also great when backing out of angled parking, when it can be difficult to see around the vehicle to my left. I get a much clearer view to see if anyone is coming down the aisle.
No, you shouldn’t trust it to be your only view, but it’s a great tool to add to the others.
I felt like enipla when cars started featuring back-up cameras. Who would need the damn things?
Now I use ours to supplement the standard safety checks on a routine basis.
Especially helpful seeing that my neck doesn’t swivel quite as easily as those dad gum millennials’ do. :mad:
I find the wide angle allows me to see things I couldn’t normally do. I pull out of a diagonal parking area and there is no way I could see oncoming traffic because it is blocked by the car on my left. With the backup camera I can.
Brian
It took me a while to “trust” the camera, but yeah, I use it now.
No more twisty neck!!
I love my back-up camera; I wonder how I got along for so many decades without one!
Yes; don’t rely completely on the back-up camera. But it does show the zone that is otherwise unviewable.
I have one on my full size pickup and check it almost every time I back up. But mainly just to make sure I’m going to miss the thing I am aiming to miss. However where it is absolutely invaluable is when you are trying to position that ball right under the trailer hitch socket. My old truck didn’t have one and it used to take me fifteen minutes to hitch up alone, ten of which was spent hopping out of the truck and finding out I’m one inch too far over again.
If horror movies are anything to go by, all cameras should be pointed at the back seat.
I have one (bought the car in 2016, first time I’ve had one). I like it. I use it but don’t depend on it since I used eyeballs for 40 years first. It makes things easier but IMHO any good driver has to know where all four corners of the car are at all times.
That’s what the side view mirrors are for.
Right, what I meant to say before. Sometimes you have to look out the side window not just back with the mirrors/camera. But I’m still not getting why you’d turn all the way around and look out the back window if you have the camera. Unless it’s not working or the lens is too obscured by dirt, but then it’s obvious you wouldn’t use it. The camera is a supplement for your overall vision. It’s not a ‘supplement’ for looking out the back window though, it’s a superior replacement, IMO.
Although some cars now have very wide view camera’s and/or cross traffic warnings when say backing out of a head in space. The more the system tells you the more you can rely on it. And there isn’t any issue of ‘trust’ per se. It’s just whether there’s something relevant you can see with your eyes that’s out of the field of the view of the camera. Looking directly back, 6 o’clock, I don’t get what that would be. At some side angle things are out of the camera’s field of view and you have to look at them, but the more advanced the system the less the camera’s blind angles are.
I use the camera because the view towards the rear of the car ('18 Impala) is lousy. I could back it up without the camera, I suppose, but it makes reversing much easier and safer.
My previous car was an Elantra GT. Its camera was hidden behind the badge on the rear hatch, and it popped up, Batmobile/007 style when I put it in reverse! It kept the camera lens clean and dry in inclement weather.
My car is 15 years old (I like to say my car is almost old enough to drive) and it doesn’t have a backup camera as an option. But I replace the stereo in it a couple of years ago, and the new stereo unit has a video input, so I wired in a backup camera. It’s pretty neat, but not all that useful. The field of view is pretty good, but I am too used to twisting my head around, so I never remember to look at it.
Just make sure you keep it clean.
I have one now, for the 1st time. Still re-training myself to use it.
It’s great when backing up because the wide angle shows more than I can see otherwise. Sometimes obstacles (and once, memorably, a small goddamn child running amok) show on the screen but can’t be seen in any other way.
But … I’m having trouble incorporating it into muscle memory. I’ve been driving like an old-fashioned grandma for over twenty years, looking over my shoulder as our caveman ancestors did, and I catch myself glancing at the screen juuuuust as I complete the maneuver and don’t need it anymore. D’oh!
Hey, I’ve had it barely a year. That’s a lotta driving years to re-train.
In the US, most if not all cars made after 2011 have them.
I use it and like it. You do have to get used to that particular car, usually the rear bumper markings are more conservative that reality.
Yes and yes. I feel it’s so much safer I installed one on my truck.
Use it and love it. No, it doesn’t cover everything and you shouldn’t rely on it to the exclusion of everything else. But it is a tremendous improvement and I wouldn’t want a car without one in the future. Of course I parallel park a heck of a lot more than 6 times a year( way, way, wayyyyy more ).
I like all the new safety/convenience features of modern cars. Blind spot monitoring, self-dimming rear-view mirrors, LED headlights to blind oncoming traffic ;). Let’s face it - old cars are steaming piles of crap relative to modern vehicles once you get past the dubious nostalgia factor. Sure, some are neat looking. But comparatively they were patently unsafe, gas-guzzling, noisy, short-lived junk. God bless the modern automobile :).
I have a backup camera. I might glance at it but it’s fairly useless.
When I first got the car I parallel parked and looked in the camera, and it looked like there was enough room to park a school bus (full sized, not one of those short ones) between the back of my car and the front of the car behind me. In reality, I couldn’t even walk between the cars. And I am not a large person.
That is how less than useless this stupid backup camera is. It is misleading.
The passenger side rearview mirror isn’t much better. It’s one of those “objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” Who thought that was a good idea for a rearview mirror? I want to know where the objects actually are, not where they might be.
If the mirror was flat, it would have a very narrow field of view due to your distance from it.