Mirrors have been an integral part of motor vehicles for over a century. The low tech solution has solved the major visibility issues involved with driving and now car makers think they can do one better using cameras instead of mirrors. This may be an improvement in large trucks where visibility using mirrors can be poor to the point that obstacles directly in front and behind the vehicle cannot be seen but for cars it may prove to be a theft opportunity.
Best not to mount a mirror, or indeed a camera, directly in the line of fire of a neighboring car door in the parking lot. Maybe someone should tell them about the practicalities of life?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by darkfeline on Thursday January 02 2020, @10:10AM (3 children)
Why do you need to look out the side window if you have no blind spots any more?
The end game is to have cameras all over the car, projected over the inside surface so that you can see through all of the car from the inside. You can theoretically provide strictly superior visibility. The question is whether it can be implemented reliably and cheaply, and can people get used to driving with it.
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(Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday January 02 2020, @11:43AM (1 child)
So car interiors will be bare spheres painted matt white? That sounds cosy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 02 2020, @05:44PM
That's unlikely, you'd still want to have windows that you can look through in case the camera system breaks while driving. Even with AI control over the car, you'd still want to be able to see what's around you in case you need to operate manually. It's one of the reasons why jets still have pilot controls despite them being capable of handling the entire flight without manual intervention of the pilot. You still want to be able to override the computer if there's a problem with the system in the rare case where the system sensors are broken in a way that the pilot's physical senses aren't.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday January 06 2020, @04:30PM
Because electronics break.
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