[BanterTrouble]

The tyre pressure sensor you can make an argument to be required by law as uneven tyre pressures can negatively effect handling.

However the backup camera being required by law is absolutely ridiculous. You can just either use the mirrors or turn your head.

[kimbernator]

From what I'm seeing after some basic googling, there is a fairly pronounced effect in terms of collision rates when people have backup cameras. And a small screen hooked up to a camera is pretty benign in terms of complexity.

If the US weren't so obsessed with enormous cars with terrible visibility, I think this would be a different conversation.

[ceejayoz]

> You can just either use the mirrors or turn your head.

I can see quite a lot in my backup cam that is in a visual blind spot in both of my cars.

[LUmBULtERA]

I'm pretty sure backup cameras are required because they reduced children being run over and killed... You can't see a small kid behind your car with by just mirrors or turning your head.

[SoftTalker]

Many cars and especially SUVs and trucks are tall enough in front that you could not see a small child right in front of the vehicle. Wide A-pillars also create blind spots that can hide pedestrians and bicycles. Where are the calls for forward- and side- facing cameras to eliminate this claimed risk?

[vkou]

Anyone who has ever driven a car will note that they have ~200 degree peripheral vision to observe things moving in front of you, while the limited FOV of your mirrors does not provide that for what's behind you.

Unless you really struggle with object permanence, a child somehow ending up in front of you without you seeing them is not a frequent occurrence, compared to one ending up behind you.

But yes, American cars are stupid big and should be smaller.

[itsoktocry]

Low tire pressure affects:

   - Gas mileage (pollution)
   - Tire wear (pollution)
   - Handling (safety)

It's wins all the way around.

[BanterTrouble]

You still don't need a sensor built into the vehicle to check it. A tyre pressure gauge you can buy on amazon for £5.

[throwaway173738]

The C pillars are too large and the body too high for you to get good sight to anything behind you in a modern vehicle.

[potato3732842]

>The C pillars are too large and the body too high for you to get good sight to anything behind you in a modern vehicle.

Which is the work product of the 2000s era of "legislate to make cars better" advocacy.

90s SUVs rolled a lot, so they changed the rules to require them be strong, Strong made them hard to see out of in reverse so they added cameras. Now because both are regulatory required, at substantial cost, you can't even make a small vehicle that doesn't have both.

It's not like the Subarus and Volvo wagons of the 00s were lacking in rollover strength or rear visibility, but now that you have to have the features by law and when all the dust of engineering tradeoffs settles the modern analogues wind up just as bad to see out of as everything else, because why wouldn't you if you're required to have the mitigation technology. No reason for 2020s Subaru shove that stupid steel bar in the pillar (at great expense) to keep it sleek and skinny when they have to have the fat pillar mitigation tech installed by law.

How many times we gonna run laps of this feedback loop before we decide the problem is systemic?

[ceejayoz]

My non-SUV C pillar is still wide because it has an airbag in it.

[EasyMark]

Yep, I always agreed with backup sensors but a camera is overkill.

[Jcampuzano2]

Backup cameras being required by law is a consequence of cars being absolutely disgustingly large for any average use case, at least in the US where I live.

I go to South America a lot to visit family and for business and the cars by and large are much more maneuverable, small and nimble, and you can actually see most things around you.

But then every time I get back on my first car ride I'm greeted with an absolute monstrosity of a vehicle. Even the average sedan feels gargantuan. Due to this people can't realistically see very well behind them. Never mind the fact that most cars the rear windshield isn't even that large anymore, and in some vehicles head checks don't even work well because the columns are right in your view.

I understand some of this is in the name of "safety", but realistically it feels like it trading one safety measure - safety for the people inside the vehicle - at the expense of another - those outside the vehicle.

[idiotsecant]

You must have quite the impressive neck if you can reproduce the same view a backup camera does.

[BanterTrouble]

You can also turn your body a bit as well.

[kube-system]

I have tried this before but I have never been able to make the bumper transparent.

The reason this law exists is because small children (e.g 3ft tall) were getting run over.

Seriously, go put a large suitcase immediately behind your rear bumper and try to see it without a camera. You can't.

[kazinator]

If you put a child size doll right under the rear wheel, can you see that in the camera? Or under a front wheel, for that matter?

Solve the problem completely or else admit that it's just for twits who can't parallel park.

[kube-system]

> Solve the problem completely

That's just simply not how safety engineering works. Safety features mitigate risk, none of them solve it.

[kazinator]

That is false. Safety engineering sometimes only mitigates risk, but often reduces it to practically zero, such that people have to be deliberately negligent to prevail in bringing about a safety incident. E.g. elevator holds 15 people, yet 45 somehow jam themselves in as a stunt.

Partial safety mitigation isn't so much how safety engineering works; it's how it ducks out of working due to non-engineering reasons. If any safety issue remains, that means engineering was not done in that regard: the safety engineers were excused from the requirement to design anything for that risk.

[BanterTrouble]

Do you believe, that I believed that I could see through the bumper?

[kube-system]

No, I believe your flippant answer was made with disregard for the need to do so.

[BanterTrouble]

I had a flippant stupid reply. So they got a stupid flippant response.

Typically when you are reversing and there is likely to be something sat behind your vehicle (like a child or a pet). You are parked. You can you know look before you get in the car.

If you have parking sensors it will alert you to something walking behind you anyway.

The point being made is there are way to deal with this without the need for a rear camera.