Some of the new cars have backup cameras. I’m concerned about the learning curve and property damage learning to use them.
Is it exactly the same as backing up using a rear view mirror?
What about judging distances? How likely are you to back into a pole or shopping cart switching to a backup camera? Can you trust these cameras and accurately judge how close you’re getting to objects?
I’m concerned because I check both my rear view mirror and side mirror when backing into my driveway. The side mirror is useful to make sure I’m not on the grass.
I’m just not sure what a backup camera will do to my driving. I don’t want to wreck a new car the very first day.
I suck at judging distances and only use the, as a double check for obstacles. I don’t find it to be any more helpful for distances - and wouldn’t rely on them for that.
The ones I have seen have a series of translucent bars superimposed over the camera display to give you a sort of measuring guide. Either way, its pretty obvious and gives you a view of things on the ground you would never see via mirrors.
I am amazed and surprised by how much I love it in my new car.
Backing up I can better see cars coming down the parking lot alley that I otherwise would not have been able to see so well and the grid gives a very good sense of how far away the vehicle behind me is and the line I am travelling (avoiding riding into the grass). Still best used as an adjunct.
I guess I’ve never seen one of those. I have driven (mostly via test drives) a ton of cars over the past 10 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever encountered that, so I don’t think it’s very common. (Though to be fair mostly what I’ve driven are higher-end foreign sedans and sports cars; maybe it’s common in some segment I haven’t driven much of, like minivans, pickups, or American cars.)
A lot of it depends on the model of car. I’ve recently rented cars that have them, and some have seemed like harmless supplements to the mirror and looking behind you, and one was simply terrible. It made backing up worse. The camera image significantly distorted what was going on behind the car, and the sightlines out the rear window were very limited - as if the designers figured you wouldn’t need to rely on looking out the window very much because you would have the camera.
It makes me fearful for young people learning to drive and getting in the habit of depending on that camera. My kid is a toddler, and I’m already ranting about how when she learns to drive, I’m disabling the camera.
Excuse me, now I have to go yell at some kids to get off my lawn.
I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if driving will be a mostly obsolete skill when your daughter reaches driving age. Carlos Ghosn is predicting fully autonomous vehicles by 2020, and given the state of the technology right now, I don’t see a reason to doubt him.
Our mazda has a back-up camera. It’s not one that give a photorealistic image that you can use to, say, back out of the driveway. It’s a fisheye aimed at the ground directly behind the car, so you can check, before you start backing up, to make sure there are no kids or toys behind you. It’s also useful when backing into a parking space with a curb.
for normal backing, I turn around and look out the back window.
I thought having a backup camera would be obnoxious, and asked the salesman if it could be turned off (yes it can).
Instead, I’ve found it to be a nice safety feature. I still use mirrors and more importantly turn my head to check what’s behind me, but the camera adds fine tuning once I’m mostly in the desired/safe position.
I just got a new car with one. It can be set to three different modes*. I’ve found it’s really nice for a quick glance behind you or when trying to back out of a parking spot in a lot. It can see who’s in the aisle without you having to cross your fingers and back up a few feet to see if there’s any cars or people walking towards you. But I really can’t use it for, say, backing down a driveway. For that, I just back up the same way I’ve been backing up all my life.
It’s also got a (right) side view camera. But that’s taking a lot of getting used to.
*It has the ‘normal’ view, fisheye and then one that’s basically straight down to be used when you’re trying to back up right next to something (like when you’re parallel parking or backing up to a wall).
Also, I’ve found the rear view camera is next to useless if you’ve been driving on salt covered roads all day long.
I don’t think backup cameras will make people *relearn *how to backup, but they may in fact make people learn how to do it to begin with! Everyone I know never ever backs up with just their mirrors, they always have to put their arm on the top of the seat and turn their head’s around. Which is fine, I do that most of the time too. But sometimes you need to just use your mirrors (like with a box truck or with a trailer), and I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who wasn’t a professional driver of some kind who would or could do this. People just can’t make the intellectual leap and accept the ‘disconnect’ of putting 100% trust in their mirrors.
Hell, I know a great many people who will do almost anything to avoid backing up any moderate distance at all, including doing a 14-point turnaround instead of just driving in reverse!
Yeah, I’m one of those. But it’s not entirely a matter of trust, it’s that the mirrors don’t give you the same field of view as actually looking directly.
I find that I’m having to learn to trust the backup camera. If I’m backing up towards a parked car, the view in the camera will indicate that there is at least eight feet between my car and the parked car. But if I look in the mirror (or even turn and look back) it “feels” like I’m at that point where I need to stop backing up or risk hitting it. Looking at the camera and then continuing to back up is somehow a bit nerve wracking, even though I can clearly see that there’s still space between the cars.
This has been mentioned already, but I think it bears repeating: Where I’ve found the backup camera the most useful is in getting out of a parking space in a parking lot. There’s a car (or big SUV) on both sides of me, I can’t see if there is a car coming. But the backup camera is wide-angle, so it sees for quite a distance in both directions at right angles to my car. I can count at least three times in just a few months where I’ve gone to my car, no other car is coming, I get in, start to back up, and then see in the backup camera that a car is coming along, not stopping even though I’m clearly backing out. So I stop, possibly avoiding a collision that I might not have been able to avoid had it not been for the camera.
I’ve never been able to do that. I mean, I physically look out the window to check for anything behind me, and may do it again to see if anything has changed. But actually backing up…mirrors only. It’s the way I was taught. In fact, when I took my driver’s test and we got to the backing up portion I thought it might be wise to do it the ‘proper’ way and wound up way off course.
As soon as I got my license, I spent a lot of time driving a van almost identical to this. It’s basically what I learned to drive with. You’ll notice that other then on the front and rear doors, it has no windows. Looking backwards to backup is next to useless. That’s where I learned how to rely on my mirrors for backing up and lane changing.
“If you use the camera instead of the mirrors, instead of in addition to, you’re doing it wrong”
And let’s not forget, as above and else where, actually looking out the windows and rear wind screen. Much better view than mirrors.
At the time, I got my license, that was one of the ‘tricks’ of the inspectors. they would tell you to pull out from the side of the road. If you looked in your mirror, saw a clear road and pulled out you would fail that part - you were required to look over your shoulder to check if the road was clear.
