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Something that works really well but is pretty uncommon: My 2016 Honda Accord coupe has a wide-angle camera on right mirror whose feed displays in a center display on when I turn the right blinker on (or manually turn the camera on). Rather than actively do anything (like stear for me) or abstract anything (like warn me when there is a vehicle in my blindspot), it just gives me a plain view of the road to the right of me extending back hundreds of feet, with only the small augmentation of 2 added virtual lines on the road, one at a single car length back and the other at two car lengths back, to help me guage distance. Simple features like this, which increases situational awareness without abstracting important dicisions away from the driver, are terrific and, despite only having anecdotal evidence of their effectiveness, I would bet my last dollar that improvements like this reduce accidents drastically. I don’t cut anybody off anymore ever, not that I ever did it intentionally in the past, but I am always extremely confident now in knowing whether or not I’m going to be pulling into a lane that has a speeding car approaching from behind or whether a car is in my blind spot, or somebody is about to change into the lane next to me from two lanes over, etc. Unfortunately, the market seems to be rewarding features that attempt to replace, rather than augment, situational awareness. |
So true. Shortly after back-up cameras came out, there was a terribly sad story in my hometown about an older driver leaving a church service that had gotten used to just looking at the camera instead of physically turning their head before backing up and wound up hitting and killing a child that was behind the car but not in clear view of the camera.