First, what hansvonaxion posted.
Second, this is just ridiculous. Forcing expensive equipment into ALL cars is just dumb. Rear mounted cameras and the needed screen up front, to solve a problem that affects a tiny tiny tiny percentage of the total crashes in that country. As said before, 80% of crashes are a result of people eating in their cars.
I'm not saying all americans are bad, and all american things suck, but they should focus on solving the larger problems, not the specific ones like this. Eating and drinking in a car should be as illegal as talking on your phone or even more. When was the last time ketchup dripped from your phone and you crashed into the car in front cos you were trying to clean it off your blouse?
I get it that you like driving along sipping coffee but it's not safe. Can't it wait 10 minutes till you reach your place of work or home? I've been told by americans that a car that doesn't have nice cupholders just doesn't sell. Which is messed up in a ton of different levels.
This part of your post just exhibits a lack of understanding of America in general.
I don't know how many times we have to explain this to you guys over in Europe but America is FUCKING big. Connecticut, the state I live in, is the 48th largest state at about 5,500 square miles or a little over 14,000 square KM. Maine, the largest state in New England and about a five to six hour drive away from most places in CT, is the 39th largest state at about 35,000 square miles or 91,000 plus square KM slightly larger then the whole country of Portugal.
Banning people from eating and drinking in their car would never, ever happen in the US. It would however be an interesting way to control obesity in this country.
Still never going to happen in the US. This time of year I work 75 plus hours a week. If I couldn't eat and drink in my car I wouldn't have time to eat.
I typically only ever drink things with a straw in my car just for the reason that it makes it easier to still see. I don't drink much coffee at all so almost everything has a straw.
As to the backing on kids thing, it's a mix of badly educated kids and badly educated drivers. Always back up slowly and teach your kid to stay clear of cars that have the white light behind them lit, and that if a car hits them, scream as soon as you can so the driver will stop.
Want a cheap fix for this? Make all cars mandatory to have an aural alert when engaging reverse, like two short beeps (not a long constant horn like lorries, that's annoying)
There isn't anyway a backup camera, if the automaker decides to use one as a camera is not required by the law, will cost $2,000 as Specter says.
Volvo has in the past had a tendency over price their cars and in particular overprice techy or gadget like options. They are getting much better about this and have done a ton of pretty drastic price drops in the past year.
In the past for example the Volvo backup camera accessory for cars with the navigation system cost $1,170 dollars to install full customer retail price at a dealer. That is just the camera not the screen. Crazy overpriced almost no one bought it. Actual cost was closer to 800 if you pulled all the labor and parts markup out. If you got the same system installed at the port the list price was around 800 dollars and cost was in the 600 range IIRC.
Now Volvo includes the back up camera as part of the multimedia package standard.
The old pre-2011 multimedia package cost $2,500 and the new 2011 one costs $2,700 dollars.
So the camera, all of its hardware and all the software to put on neat graphics on the screen showing you where your bumper is in relation to objects and where your back tires are going costs $200 to the customer. I bet it costs Volvo less then $100. Oh a color coded graphical representation from the bumper's parking sensors are also overlaid onto the image on the screen. A pretty good deal overall considering though the rest of the multimedia package is still overpriced.
That is with the price of the screen already built into the old multimedia package price.
My guess without a screen already in place the cost of doing a backup camera system at the factory would be around 250-500 dollars depending on the type and size of screen used. The manufacturer will then charge whatever they think they can get for that system. Lots of cars are going to multimedia systems with fairly large screens built into the dash because that is what customers want even on lower end model cars.
I have had people refuse to even look at cars that don't have backup cameras. This has been going on for about five years now. I once had a guy buy a Range Rover over a Range Rover Sport that he liked better simply because the Range Rover had a factory backup camera and the Range Rover Sport was not available with one. Think about that for a second.
The guy spend $15,000 more on a car because of the camera. Well that and his new trophy wife through a fit to get a car with a camera over one without it.
Not that the average person has an extra $15,000 around to buy a car but still it shows how much people want those features.
Keep in mind this is also all in today's dollars not dollars from four to five years in the future. Technology like this doesn't cost more in five years it costs less. So something simple like a backup camera, the related hardware and software that costs an OEM $150 now may only cost $95 in five years. Regular plain average cars are much cheaper now then they were 10-15 years ago.
