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Cameras to Replace Mirrors on Cars and Trucks

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday January 02 2020, @04:15AM   
from the What-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

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?

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Original Submission

• You're way off base (Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Thursday January 02 2020, @10:37PM

  by fyngyrz (6567) on Thursday January 02 2020, @10:37PM (#938852) Journal

  How is your depth perception when you look at the camera's display?

  This is grossly overrated. I have one usable eye; I do just fine. It's not like anyone is going to come cruising up in a 3' semitrailer, or a 100' sedan. It's very easy to look and know exactly what you're seeing, and what that means to your driving strategy. With two working eyes, it was even easier, and not because "there were mirrors" but because my damned nose is now in the way of some peripheral input I'd prefer to still have. But then, enter cameras: problem addressed.

  How does moving your head work when you are looking at a display?

  A typical camera for this role has a far wider field of view than does any mirror. There's no need to be moving your head around; you can see perfectly well without waggling about. Cameras can also be mounted in places where you'd have no angle of view at all — for instance, at the upper trunkline or roofline, looking down to see exactly what the gap is between your vehicle and the one you're backing up towards in a tight parking space. Or looking down at the curb on the side to give you knowledge of just how close you actually are to the curb. Etc. They can be a lot better protected than mirrors as well.

  You can have also have quite a few cameras. I have seven on my pickup (front- and rear-facing at license plate level, front, left, right and back down-facing, and one down-facing on the pickup cab into the pickup's cargo bed), and pushbutton video switching on the dash. I can see very well indeed; and I can switch to whatever one I want to depending on what I'm doing. When I drive, I usually leave it on rearview. When I park, I use the down-pointing side, front and back cameras to make sure I'm exactly where I want to be and to completely avoid misestimating closure. All the cameras have IR emitters, and can see just fine in the dark. The rear view one is far less prone to glare than a mirror is; it only gets just so bright, then stops. And in that state, it's not blinded, either.

  I set up my SO's car similarly; six cameras. she loves it. Of course. Because it's awesome. 😊

  We have a blind driveway that exits into an alley; I have a pair of cameras on the back of a shed that broadcast a split frame so you can see both ways down the ally. We just switch inputs to our video receiver, and bam, we can reliably avoid being t-boned. Or t-boning someone else.

  The one serious downside to all of this, as pointed out above several times, is that the entire system can succumb to single points of failure: both the monitor (if you only have one) and video switcher. But this is also true of the GPS and other monitor-dependent systems in the vehicle. Modern vehicles are indeed more complex, but the vast majority of the time, this is a very good thing, because they are way better than their predecessors.

  Finally, I've had this stuff going for almost ten years now, moving from NTSC video to HD (analog) video when it became reasonably practical, and I've never actually had a failure. I admit up front that if and when I do, it's (a) going to be really annoying, and (b) going to get fixed ASAP. Which will be very quickly, inasmuch as I designed and installed the system and have spare everything on the shelf.

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  Want about to a race conditions? hear joke

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