Side mirror that eliminates 'blind spot' receives US patent

jack_christie

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Hicks's mirror has a field of view of about 45 degrees, compared to 15 to 17 degrees of view in a flat mirror.
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-math-professor-side-mirror-patent.html
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They'll have to change the text on the US mirrors to "Objects in mirror may be wherever lol". I'm also surprised by the photoshoped or exchanged "reference" mirror in the original article. Narf what does your fancy shiny lights on the mirror do?
 
You wouldn't have a fucking blind spot problem if you set up your mirrors correctly. You don't need to see the damn door.

Fig 1, 3, 4 yes, 2 and 5 no dumbshits.

eliminate-car-blind-spots.jpg


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God it pisses me off and I don't know why.

Also buy a pair of these for 2 bucks and your car will park itself.


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We were all born with blind spot eliminators, it's called looking over your shoulder.
 
We were all born with blind spot eliminators, it's called looking over your shoulder.

This. I can't even remember the last time I used a wing mirror.


Actually, I take that back. I can. It was on a race track since I had 6-point harnesses and couldn't turn around. :rolleyes:
 
I can't even remember the last time I used a wing mirror.

You should see a memory doctor (if you just can't remember), a neck doctor (if you turn your head left and right all the time instead of quick glances in the wing mirrors), or a driving instructor :p
 
We were all born with blind spot eliminators, it's called looking over your shoulder.

Yes! Agreed. Even though my mirrors are all setup correctly I never make maneuvers based solely on them, I always do a shoulder check to make sure it's clear.
 
I believe I have one of my mirrors out so far that it won't go any further. Fuck the doors -- I know they're there. The only time I look over my shoulder is check if a car is like right next to me.

Also: http://www.cartalk.com/content/avoiding-blind-spot-6
 
I set my mirrors up to include a little bit of door in the edge - I know the doors are there (I'd have noticed earlier if they'd fallen off), but it's to provide a sense of scale and distance to everything else in the mirror. I know how big a door is and how far it is from the mirror's glass, so from that my brain can perform a fuzzy calculation of how far anything else in the mirror is.
But yeah, nothing wrong with the/my standard practice when changing lanes of checking the mirror, then over my shoulder then moving out and checking the mirror briefly again as I do. And for reversing, why wouldn't you look over your shoulder?
The wider you make the angle of the mirror, the smaller and less noticable any object in it is. You're going to briefly glance in a 45 degree mirror and think it's clear when it isn't.

Of course there's the Lexus drivers' way which should the average 'merican road user - just sit where you are and push the little button to electrically angle the mirror around to check the blind spot. Technology.
 
I think we all agree that most of us who are into cars have good spatial awareness so we mostly don't have problems figuring out where the cars around us are. However there are some (many) people who don't have spatial awareness at all/think they are alone on the road/thnk the wing mirrors are just there to hang up purses/for decorational purposes only, and for those it would be a good thing to have a wider field of view.

In the current Mercedes S-class you can get a "blind spot-eliminator" (I don't know if they are standard or optional extras) which are radar sensors and indicators inside the wing mirrors. When someone is roughly in the blind spot there is a red symbol in the wing mirror so if you look at the mirrors you know that there is something diagonally behind you. I can imagine these sensors and indicators are something which would make sense in smaller cars, too, but in cheap small cars they would increase the price notably. If these mirror glasses with a wider field of view are cheaper to produce than radar sensors and indicators in the glass it would make sense.

When I drive I check the mirrors pretty often so I monitor cars approaching from behind or cars I just overtook so I can predict their behaviour. Anticipatory driving isn't just about what's going on in front of you, but next to you and behind you, too, but many people don't understand that.
 
What's wrong with the regular two-sectioned mirrors?

The big deal about this new mirror is not the field of view (any convex mirror will give you that, as you've noticed), but the fact that you get it without any distortion. I think it's an ingenious solution, since a wider field of view in a mirror is always useful, particularly on buses and Heavy-duty trucks, since this would allow them to have the field of view they need without having to make the mirrors so huge. :)
 
We were all born with blind spot eliminators, it's called looking over your shoulder.

This. I can't even remember the last time I used a wing mirror.


Actually, I take that back. I can. It was on a race track since I had 6-point harnesses and couldn't turn around. :rolleyes:

Not everyone has full range of motion for their neck/shoulders.

I have sold plenty of Volvos with the BLIS(Blind spot Information System) to people who maybe cannot turn their head as much do to age or injury.

We also have sold a couple of Volvos with the new Front view 180 degree camera for the same reason.

Stuff like this is going to be a problem more and more as the population ages.
 
I have my mirrors set up so that my doors are just out of view, and with slight head movement provide vision to either side fairly easily. Especially in the Miata I need to have them close in so I can see behind me if the rear window starts fogging up.
 
Those cameras on the front corners of the car so you can see around blind corners should be way more common. I experience so many intersections where you have to basically guess when you can go because there's no way you can see what's coming until you are actually in the middle of the road. I'd rather have that, I do fine with my current mirrors and neck for now.

I want radar parking sensors and a reversing camera too. It's not a problem in my car because it's the size of a shoe but trying to park something like my dad's Commodore wagon which is massive, has bulging hips that you can't see in the mirrors, a rear window that ends so far behind where you're sitting that you need binoculars to see whats going on back there, and a tow bar sticking out blindly beyond that, is an exercise in futility. I get terrified of punching that tow bar straight through the bumper and radiator of the car behind me, or scraping those invisible hips of the car. It's a nightmare in a tight car park. Cameras would solve all these problems.
 
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_mirror said:
U.S. the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 111 and the analogous Canada Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 111 require the driver side mirror to provide "unit magnification", i.e., an undistorted 1:1 reflection achieved with a flat mirror. However, unit magnification limits the field of view that can be provided by a mirror of size compatible with the vehicle body. The ECE regulations in use throughout most of the world except North America permit the driver side mirror to have a planar, convex, and/or aspheric surface; an aspheric section is often combined with a larger convex section, and the two sections are separated by a visible line to alert the driver to the two sections' different perspective shifts.

There's still that regulation to bypass, which wouldn't neccessitate the invention of this mirror if convex mirrors were allowed in the US in the first place.

Isn't this "invention" just repeating what the rest of the world has had for yonks?
 
Not everyone has full range of motion for their neck/shoulders.

I have sold plenty of Volvos with the BLIS(Blind spot Information System) to people who maybe cannot turn their head as much do to age or injury.

We also have sold a couple of Volvos with the new Front view 180 degree camera for the same reason.

Stuff like this is going to be a problem more and more as the population ages.


Which brings us to the argument that driving tests after a certain age (say 65) should be mandatory every 1 or 2 years, like they are in some European countries!

I'm still terrified by the fact that there are 90+ year-olds driving around on the same roads as everyone else.
 
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