A driving school instructor once told me that no part of the car should be visible in either of your side mirrors. For some reason, I just feel better calibrated if I can see just a portion of my car in them. In my case, the rear door handles stick out slightly so I position the mirrors so that only the handles are in my field of vision when looking at either mirror.
The only car parts visible in my side-view mirrors are those of cars in the lanes adjacent to me.
Someone on the SDMB posted a few years ago that there is no such thing as a blind spot if you position your side mirrors correctly. Like your instructor, he said you should not see any part of your car. So I tried it. I moved the angle outwards and drove down a multi-lane road allowing myself to be passed by cars and in turn passing cars. What I discovered was that cars disappeared from my rearview mirror and almost immediately the nose appeared in the side mirror. Long vehicles were visible in the side mirror while still visible in the rearview mirror.
It was obvious after this practice, that even in a car with shitty visibility, between the rearview mirror, the side mirror and a slight turn of the head it is possible to see everything in the lanes beside you. It has made driving much more relaxing.
Do what’s best for you. Test it.
It’s a lot different for a short person with the seat forward, than a tall person that has to have the seat all the way back. That’s why they adjust.
Your driving school instructor is correct. When I took Driver’s Ed, the common practice was to align them as you do, so you can just see the side of your vehicle in the mirror, for reference. I am going to guess that sometime in the 1990s somebody did a study which showed that was not the best way, that it lead to much larger blind spots. I say 1990s as that is when I first started hearing about setting them the way your instructor told you.
I have to admit, I was skeptical at first, and it took some getting used to, but with my mirrors properly adjusted, I can see the front of most cars in my side mirror while the back of that car is still visible in my rear mirror. You might be able to get a Smart Car in my blind spot, but that would be about it.
You will be much better off to learn how to do it right from the start so you don’t have to unlearn bad habits.
Call it just a sliver. Now on the bikes I want basically just a piece of my elbows and arms; and I don’t trust the view but always turn and look for myself.
Whether you’re using them mainly while driving or mainly while parking in places with bollards or similar items affects how they should be adjusted. I was also taught to adjust the mirrors so I couldn’t see my own car, but to see the bollards in the parking lot at my previous job I needed to also see a thin slice of my car (just the ittiest bit of red). The trip was short enough that it didn’t justify readjusting (my car’s mirrors need to be adjusted manually).
I was taught to lean to the center of the car, and adjust the right side mirror until you can just see the edge of your car. Then lean to the left and adjust the left side mirror the same way. When you’re sitting normally it should remove any mirror blind spots. Never really checked it to confirm.
In my driving lessons, around 1985, we were told we should see our own car, but just the thickness of the paint. The way to check blind spots was to turn one’s head for a quick look. That was my policy…
…until I got my Chevrolet Volt. The C pillars are so huge that I could miss a truck following me in the right lane, even if I turn my head. So now my right-side mirror is set to show that spot, and I’ve glued on a little convex mirror so I can still watch my car’s paint a little bit.
Old school here, just a sliver of car showing.
I won’t dispute that the alternate “mirrors outboard” method can work nicely, but I fear that if I modified something so basic about how I drive after 35 years of driving, I might be setting myself up for trouble.
Used to like seeing my car in them just so I had a reference point. Then I decided I just needed to know if there was something there, and if there was I could do some more investigating to decide where exactly the object in my mirror was. So…none of my car is in my sideviews anymore.
I’ve used the Car Talk method pretty much since they started recommending it.
I agree with shunpiker. Nobody taught me how to adjust mirrors while I was in driver’s ed but making sure I could see the lanes next to me seemed pretty critical, so that’s what I did. Driver’s ed guidance has apparently caught up to me.
If you adjust your mirrors this way, you can still see the car in the mirrors by moving your head slightly. Doing so increases your field of view.
I’m pretty sure that was me!
I set them the correct way (in order to eliminate blind spots), but every time I take my car in for an oil change or other type of service, the idiots adjust them so my car is visible in them.:mad:
I position them wide, such that going from left mirror to rear view to right mirror creates as close to a seamless panorama as possible. There is pretty much no blind spot this way (though I think you may be able to sneak a motorcycle in there if you had it very close along the side by the rear bumper. That said, you can move your head to get at that angle and see it.) It takes most people a bit of time to get used to this setting, but fir me it’s always been completely intuitive. If I need to see the side of my car, like for backing up out of a narrow space, I just move my head and body over towards the mirror and I’m able to see it.
Better that they adjust the mirrors than ignore them and back into something around the shop.
That’s what I’ve been doing and it seems to work. Haven’t sideswiped many people lately.
I was originally taught to position them in the “legacy” manner, showing part of the car I was driving. After a couple years of “checking my blind spot” it occurred to me that most of what I could see in the side view mirrors was already visible in the rear view. That seemed like a silly waste of two mirrors, so I swung them wide and, as others have mentioned, found that it virtually eliminated the blind spot. I can watch a motorcycle pass from my rear view to my side view and into my peripheral vision with no gap in visibility.
I’m also a Legacist. But my Fiat 500 has a little convex mirror just outboard of the main mirror, so I’ve developed the habit of checking that before changing lanes. It shows the blind spot very well.