Some friends have such a mirror/monitor in their Jeep Cherokee, bought and driven here in the USA. In monitor mode, it shows an almost 180 degree arc, with the various blind spots created by the B and C posts digitally and seamlessly filled in. Very impressive.
A friend has a Cadillac with the same sort of rear view display instead of a conventional rear view mirror. The chief drawback is that if you’ve got crummy closeup vision, then this display (a foot from your eyes) will appear blurry compared to what you’d see in a conventional mirror (in which the virtual image of the car behind you appears as far away as the car behind you actually is).
My curiosity piqued by the question of wing mirror angle I observed the reality on my car when driving just now.
Even with the curved edge on the driver’s side mirror there was a blind region about 2 metres long. Too small to fit a car, but easily able to hide a bike. The technology providing blind spot warnings generally works great, but no doubt, the missing spot is worrying.
So, angle the mirrors out. It took about five seconds to get comfortable with. The trick seems to be to reference the view by context - road markings make it easy. The mindset of what you are looking at changes, and a different geometry takes hold. This may be one of those areas where different people have different ways of processing what is happening. So YMMV.
The passenger side mirror is slightly annoying. Most modern cars will rotate the mirror downwards when the car is placed in reverse. This is a really useful thing when backing. You are able to reference the side of the car against the road and curb. But, if angled out for best rearward view, you lose the value of this view. One might argue that the car should allow you to set the view parameters for reversing, but it seems they don’t. Would be just a software change.
If you have all around cameras, a synthetic bird’s eye, and other views, it isn’t as big a loss. But it is a thing. Camera’s don’t have the resolution or dynamic range of a naked eyeball. At least in daytime.
I am very thankful my car didn’t get the digital rear view mirror. That is a solution in search of a problem IMHO. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. The various views displayed on a larger screen on the dash is much more manageable. And you keep the rear view mirror’s view.
Doing that makes the side mirrors useless for backing up, though. And when your work ride is an E150 cargo van, side mirrors are all you’ve got for backing up.
Okay. But for those of us who don’t drive an E150 cargo van and do have a rearview mirror, I’m somewhat shocked that people still adjust their sideviews to be able to see the side of their car. If (g)you are one of those people, I would advise you to just take a look in the rearview, and then take a look in the sideviews. If you can see some of the same things in the sideview as your rearview, that is a good sign you could stand to tilt your sideviews out just a bit more without losing sight of anything.
If not necessarily cheap: Toyota replaced the mirrors on our Sienna under warranty because they had play in them. $1100 each. (Stupidest part: folks whose mirrors were out of warranty figured out that all they needed was a five-cent washer to fix the problem!)
I tried the aim wide side mirror thing with my car for a while, but found that I wasn’t processing the info from the mirror efficiently with the loss of side of the car as a reference. Maybe it’s because I’m constantly switching between vehicles, and the van absolutely has to have the sides of the vehicle in the mirror. Maybe it’s because I didn’t give myself enough time to get used to it. But I’d see things in the side mirror and not instantly know where they were relative to me. Seeing them is good. Not being able to use that information, not so much. I’d rather rely on a small additional convex mirror. Or just shoulder check.
Also, I use side mirrors for backing in both the car and the van. How on earth do you reverse with just a rearview? You can’t see beside your vehicle. You can’t see how close to the curb you are when parallel parking. You can’t see where you are relative to the vehicles beside you if backing into a nose-in spot. And you can’t just swivel your head to see beside you on the passenger side from the driver seat.
I’m sorry, but none of those are problems I have ever had that I couldn’t get around by just turning my head. And if it’s a choice between suboptimal visibility while backing/parking, and suboptimal visibility while flying down the highway at 75 mph, I’ll choose suboptimal visibility while backing/parking. Because there’s a lot more time to twist and turn in the seat at parking speeds. And a lot less catastrophic if something goes wrong.
When I added the passenger side mirror to my Civic in 1986 the cost was, IIRC, about $90.
I’m sure car makers like this setup because they can say they only sell the complete unit, whatever the cost. People are more likely to buy one because it is easy to install. I also remember junk cars back in the day (the classic $100 jalopy from the 60’s) where the mirror was dangling by the adjustment cable once the holes at the base had rusted through the doors. (or it was broken in a collision or something).
Several years later I replaced the driver’s side unit for $40 from an auto wrecker when the mirror glass fell off.
Cars in the blind spot with conventional side mirror aiming are also easily seen just by turning your head.
I tried your way. It really didn’t work for me. Whoever commented above about the evangelicalism of the splayed-out aiming method advocates was apparently onto something.
If I’m evangelical about eliminating blind spots when traveling at highway speeds, then I suppose I’m evangelical about looking both ways before crossing the street, too.
Modern car parts are an extortion racket. Car companies will come up all manner of reasons why a part costs so much. But none hold much water. Most are manufactured in the hundreds of thousands to millions of units. In any reasonable sized country warehousing and distribution are not an impost. Maybe Amazon should get in on the act.
That said, a wing mirror has become a pretty complex device.
- retraction motorisation
- mirror aiming
- heating of mirror
- turn indicator
- camera
- mirror auto dimming
are all reasonably common in even mid-range cars.
I should also point out the simplicity of the bolt-mirror-in door-triangle system. Imagine the work required - by hand, hard to automate - to put a mirror on the door panel, screw it down, thread the control cable (electrical or manual) attach it to the interior panel before the interior panel is attached onto the door, etc. The modern system is simple, the mirror unit comes ready-to-go from the manufacturer and requires no factory labour. a combination of efficient and cheaper.
Japanese articles on the subject claim that currently the only model of cars sold in Japan with hood mounted mirrors (called “fender mirrors”) is the Jpn Taxi model.
Various articles cite various reasons for the lasting popularity, but I suspect that most of those reasons are just because people don’t like change and they come up with reasons to justify them.
The change to allow door mounted mirrors was in 1983. I first came in 1981, and remember all the cars with the “fender mirrors.”
No it doesn’t. All you have to do is shift in your seat/ lean a bit and you can see down the side of the vehicle just like before.
Bonus: you are less likely to get bright headlights shining directly into your eyes from people behind you.
You can also use convex mirrors to cover blind spots. They take a little adjustment, but can show you if the lane is clear or not.
I think the bigger question isn’t why the rest of the world doesn’t follow Japan about fender mirrors, it’s the opposite- why does Japan persist with fender mirrors?
I agree with @Great_Antibob that it’s most likely inertia that keeps them around; the Japanese regulations were changed in 1983 to allow regular side mirrors like the rest of the world.
After reading this thread, I just drove my 2017 Corolla, and moved the side mirrors out wide. While it may take more getting used to, it’s much more logical – I began to see the advantage (no pun intended)…as a car left my rear view, it became visible in the driver’s side view, and vice versa. Much better than swiveling my head around. So I’ll try it for awhile and see if I can actually get used to it.
On the subject of rear/side view cameras, I don’t understand the reasoning for that. Mirrors are much simpler technology (I read Francis_Vaughan’s post. That technology is not what I mean–a piece of silvered glass is much lower tech than a camera). Why use it in cars (I can see the backup camera being an advantage though)? To me, file that under just because they can, doesn’t mean they should (again, as Francis_Vaughan said).
There are some potential benefits from side view cameras. It’s a small savings in fuel efficiency not to have things sticking off the sides of cars and they can virtually eliminate blindspots. And they do tend to be simpler than modern mirror systems.
But the arguments for and against haven’t fully been settled yet and I doubt they become widespread in the US for a good while yet.
Surprisingly (to me at least), these aren’t very new arguments, either. Here’s an IEEE Spectrum editorial from 2014 with some of those points.
However, afaik, they are used only in Japan and only in taxis. And it appears- only on one model of txais.
So the real question is- why do Japanese taxis have them in the wrong spot?
Yep, that is how I adjust my mirrors, so that a car on the left (for example) leaves the rear view mirror about the time it appears in the side view, and leaves the side view mirror just as it appears in your vision. No blind spots.
Have any of you actually driven panel vans? What you are suggesting is utterly insane.
Well, not the convex mirrors. Of course I have convex mirrors on the van.