Rearview Camera Mandate by 2014

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White Crow

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Years ago the car co. fought seat belts said it would cost to much and no one would buy their cars then they fought collapsible steering columns costs hundreds of dollars no one would buy cars. Then they fought emissions would raze the price thousands of dollars we can’t compete. I don't believe the car co.’s any more then I believe the politicians they are all in it for the money. I don’t know where you have found that people killed by reversing cars is not an issue just Google it there are dozens of pages addressing just that. Last year there were 4 deaths here in Maine related to reversing vehicles and Maine has less people then most large cities. Yes responsibility lies in the hands of the driver but a backup camera is a good tool in an SUV or pickup. Should the Gov. mandate it? Not really but I think you’ll find that they are becoming very popular and dozens of small co. are making after market backup cameras so there must be some thing too it. I have one on my Tacoma and I grantee it did not cost Toyota any $600.
 

MrMopar

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I don’t know where you have found that people killed by reversing cars is not an issue just Google it there are dozens of pages addressing just that.
I simply said it is not an issue that the government needs to get involved in with an industry-wide mandate. The numbers of this happening are just far too low to justify what NHTSA is proposing. I can say with near certainty that I will never back over anyone with any car I will ever own, and that I myself will never be backed over by anyone. The odds of that happening to me or me doing that to someone are just so astronomically low.

If I walked into a dealership and saw a rearview camera as a $500 mandatory option on a car that I wanted to buy, I could say "I don't know anyone who has been backed over. I don't know anyone who has done the backing over to anyone. Why must I and every other customer pay this charge for something that will never enter my sphere of existence?"

Last year there were 4 deaths here in Maine related to reversing vehicles and Maine has less people then most large cities.
OK, why do you think a $200 camera is a necessary addition to new vehicles to fix a problem that you acknowledge has killed 0.000003% of the population of Maine?

Should the Gov. mandate it? Not really but I think you’ll find that they are becoming very popular and dozens of small co. are making after market backup cameras so there must be some thing too it.
And we get to the part where you agree that we don't need a government mandate. And that the aftermarket and OEM market is solving the issue for us with voluntary options.
 
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DPM

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If you think a tiny integrated camera is $500 of an add, you're very wrong. The radio already has an LCD, remember. I doubt it'd even be $50 of a difference at manufacturing...
 

MrMopar

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If you think a tiny integrated camera is $500 of an add, you're very wrong. The radio already has an LCD, remember. I doubt it'd even be $50 of a difference at manufacturing...
Yeah, probably cheaper. I was thinking my price estimate hasn't caught up to modern electronics.

Still, we are talking about a mandate to add them to 2014 vehicles. The lead time for designing modern cars really doesn't allow that. All the vehicles out there that have sheetmetal and trim pieces that are already designed for 2014 models (or won't change from 2013 models) would then have to be somehow changed to accommodate a camera that only NHTSA knows what will be required in the actual specifications.

The interior is another issue for vehicles that DON'T already have any LCD screens in them.

Will night-vision be required? What about bright days where the image might be washed out? How big will the display in the car have to be? Where will it be required to be positioned? Will a multi-function LCD for radio and climate control be allowed, or will it have to be a dedicated LCD display just for the camera? If it's allowed to be integrated into the stereo, must the music be automatically muted when the vehicle is put in reverse?

These are just the questions I can think of. Imagine what some government regulator can require, especially when they're already unwilling to define "infrequent" for the purposes of other regulations.
 

eb2143

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I think there are a lot of good points on both sides of the issue for this mandate—it will be interesting to see the magnitude of the reduction in backover accidents. As someone pointed out, if your mind is off, a camera won't help, yet if you're overly focused on the camera, side impact accidents will rise.

I think the point that opponents need to remember is that no matter how vigilant one is, it can be impossible to see a child behind a vehicle due to the blind spot, which tend to grow as cars become safer with higher belt-lines. This is not a mandate for a safety device in response to a problem largely stemming from driver inattentiveness, which I would be more likely to have a problem with (i.e. if something like Volvo's pedestrian system were mandated...although I'm sure that's coming)

The "I'm a good driver, this couldn't happen to me" attitude is ridiculous for a backover and the question, "What if I ran a child over?" needs to be asked. If you ran over your kid, wouldn't you have wanted some way to know he or she was there? If you were told it would cost a $100 per car to have had some way to see in your blind spot, would you argue that was too high of price to pay? Plus, we tend to focus on deaths; let's also mention the 17,000 injuries annually, many of which probably require hospitalization ($$$).

As for the economics of it, I say they're overblown. They're already standard on 45% of vehicles, after being a rare option, usually bundled with NAV, just 5 years ago—without any mandate at all they likely would have been standard on the vast majority of vehicles in five years time anyway.

There are some parallels between the evolution of safety systems in cars to the airline-manufacturing industry, where more sophisticated automation and fail-saves HAVE made air travel safer, yet when accidents do happen, we are reminded that it can still all come crashing down when pilots receive inadequate training (in high altitude stalls, for instance)or have gotten away with shutting their brains off one too many times.

So I tend to support the mandate, but would strongly support some measure of collision avoidance/spin recovery/inclement weather driving to be taught in driver's ed (check out Finnish driver's education system: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnYGhAXbDsM) . It's amazing to me that we give out licenses to people who have never had a safe opportunity to attempt even an emergency lane change.
 
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eb2143

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Yeah, probably cheaper. I was thinking my price estimate hasn't caught up to modern electronics.
The estimate is quite a bit less:
Though NHTSA is convinced the mandate will go a long way toward protecting pedestrians, it also agrees that the technology will be expensive. In its study, it found that adding a backup camera to a vehicle without an existing visual display screen will probably cost $159 to $203 per vehicle. That number shrinks to between $58 and $88 for vehicles that already use display screens.
 

MrMopar

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The "I'm a good driver, this couldn't happen to me" attitude is ridiculous for a backover and the question, "What if I ran a child over?" needs to be asked.
My argument has nothing to do with being a good driver. It has to do with the miniscule odds of this happening to me. I don't entertain hypotheticals with lottery-winning chances of happening simply because the world is vexing enough as is without excess worry like this.
 

tditom

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My argument has nothing to do with being a good driver. It has to do with the miniscule odds of this happening to me...
Yeah- it's all about YOU :rolleyes:

KidsAndCars.org said:
In the U.S. at least fifty children are being backed over by vehicles EVERY week. Forty-eight (48) are treated in hospital emergency rooms and at least two (2) children are fatality injured every WEEK.
I'm not saying rearview cameras are the right answer. I'd prefer a detection system that would work with a small child and alert the driver. I think cameras are too dependant on people using them for the mitigation of this particular risk. Still seems too passive of a system. An active system with an audible alarm would be better.

Making a reliable and cost-effective one might be a challenge. The current sensor systems seem to make a point of advertising that they detect larger, immobile objects. You'd need IR or the like to detect a small lifeform, IMO.

As careful of a driver as you may be, you can't control whether or not a neighbor kid pops out behind you in an apartment complex. If the cost of the vehicle is a few hundred more, I don't see an issue of paying for it.
 

White Crow

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I simply said it is not an issue that the government needs to get involved in with an industry-wide mandate. The numbers of this happening are just far too low to justify what NHTSA is proposing. I can say with near certainty that I will never back over anyone with any car I will ever own, and that I myself will never be backed over by anyone. The odds of that happening to me or me doing that to someone are just so astronomically low.

If I walked into a dealership and saw a rearview camera as a $500 mandatory option on a car that I wanted to buy, I could say "I don't know anyone who has been backed over. I don't know anyone who has done the backing over to anyone. Why must I and every other customer pay this charge for something that will never enter my sphere of existence?"



OK, why do you think a $200 camera is a necessary addition to new vehicles to fix a problem that you acknowledge has killed 0.000003% of the population of Maine?



And we get to the part where you agree that we don't need a government mandate. And that the aftermarket and OEM market is solving the issue for us with voluntary options.
What's a life worth maybe two lives how do you think the mother felt after running over her child? Very hard to say oh well it's just a number we'll have to kill a few more before some one does something. I think the public is starting to demand it there are more and more cameras showing up on every thing it will take care of it's self. Often things have to be mandated though because other wise it would never happen I don't know if you have ever sat in one of these SUV's but you can not see a damn thing behind them. My daughter run over her dog sleeping behind the van would a camera saved the dog I think it might have.
 

eb2143

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My argument has nothing to do with being a good driver. It has to do with the miniscule odds of this happening to me. I don't entertain hypotheticals with lottery-winning chances of happening simply because the world is vexing enough as is without excess worry like this.
Trust me, it's not something that keeps me up at night.
But you are right, the odds are minuscule for a given year. This got me curious:

About 18,000 injuries with 190 million licensed drivers--1 in every 10,600 drivers is involved in a backover accident in a given year.

What are the odds of being involved in a backover accident in your driving career? If we take a person's average number of licensed years to be 55, 1 in every 192 drivers will injure someone by backing into them during their lifetime. I'll admit I'm not a probability guru, but I think that's right. Suddenly the probability of this happening to you or someone you know gets a lot closer to home.

Given the number of people who back into pets or objects during their driving career, I wouldn't be surprised if this mandate was supported by a majority of people (including insurance companies)—I found the statistic that about 300,000 reported accidents occur while backing up on a yearly basis. Given this, we can estimate about 1 in every 12 drivers will be involved in an accident while backing up in their lifetime.
 
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MrMopar

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As careful of a driver as you may be, you can't control whether or not a neighbor kid pops out behind you in an apartment complex.
I watch behind me when I am backing. And I mitigate the issue of errant, trespassing children by backing up slow enough that there isn't any risk of serious injury happening.
 

DPM

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yeah. Unless you are watching both side mirrors SIMULTANEOUSLY you can't be sure nothing has entered the hidden central zone.

And speed has very little to do with it in the case of a "rolling over and crushing" scenario. Once that bike (or whatever) is knocked over, the victim is pinned under your vehicle. Plastic bumper, radio on? No contact noise worth a damn. Squish.
 

supton

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What are the odds of being involved in a backover accident in your driving career? If we take a person's average number of licensed years to be 55, 1 in every 192 drivers will injure someone by backing into them during their lifetime. I'll admit I'm not a probability guru, but I think that's right. Suddenly the probability of this happening to you or someone you know gets a lot closer to home.
I wonder what the odds are for hitting small critters or sliding off the road in inclement weather; or rear-ending someone. Probably less than 1 in x (meaning, odds are it'll happen to a driver multiple times). I know I manage to do that every few years. Maybe they ought to mandate cow-pushers and snowtires/AWD while they are at it.

You're right, it's getting cheaper to put it in. Methinks though I'll do just fine with a lower beltline, that I can simply see out of. Funny how my station wagon lets me do exactly that. But oversized LCD's for radio setups (for that nav system I don't want either) would work fine enough for this, and the camera's are only going to get cheaper.

If they put in a backup camera, can they put a monitor into the ceiling, that I can flip down so I can see that *and* look out the back window? That way, I can see below the rear beltline *and* see what is around in the 120-180 degree normal viewing field. Until they do that, I'm not particularly interested in something that I can only see if I stare at the dashboard.
 
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Abacus

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This is an argument designed to mitigate and deflect from the personal responsibility of the parent.

I know someone who killed their child by backing over them accidentally, and it was an accident. It was actually negligence, because a parent should know where their child is AT ALL TIMES, but it was tragic, so you'll never see that mentioned. A year later he dropped a tree on his other child and killed him. I know the guy and it was an accident, but it also could have been prevented if he had done things differently. It wasn't the tree's fault, the chainsaw's fault, or his truck's fault, it was his fault.

Don't mandate to me someone else's negligence, it won't work.

For those people in northern states, the backup camera is on the rear of the car (duh), but what else is present 3 or 4 months a year? Sand and salt, most of the time so much you can't read a license plate. Good luck getting a camera to stay clean enough to see.

It's another solution in search of a problem, based on statistics and it's designed to play on emotions rather than logic. The more people take the responsibility and consequences of driving out of the hands of the driver and put it into the vehicle, the worse drivers will become. We've already seen it in the school systems with the computers and declining aptitude, and this is no different. Stop trying to pass the buck.
 

MrMopar

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yeah. Unless you are watching both side mirrors SIMULTANEOUSLY you can't be sure nothing has entered the hidden central zone.
When I am backing I am turned around and looking where I am backing. I'm not looking in ANY mirror - I am looking out the back of the car to see where I am backing.
 

eb2143

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Until they do that, I'm not particularly interested in something that I can only see if I stare at the dashboard.
MrMopoar said:
When I am backing I am turned around and looking where I am backing. I'm not looking in ANY mirror - I am looking out the back of the car to see where I am backing.
I don't think anyone is advocating that backup cameras become a substitute for turning about and looking out the rear window.

The idea is: put the vehicle in reverse, check the blind spot camera while you're still facing forward, turn around and reverse as usual. The handful of acquaintances I have with backup cameras use them this way, in addition for utilizing them to maximize their space backing up in tight spaces without hitting the vehicle behind them.
 

Chris B

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Yes, but modern car design is such that you can't see behind your without a camera :rolleyes:

-J
Yes, and that's my big beef with this issue. My '02 Jetta wagon has fabulous outward visibility and the seating position is such that you don't feel like you're looking out of a WWII machine gun bunker. Between the side and rear view mirrors (and that nice BIG back window), I can see behind me very well. Yet, there have been several instances where I almost backed into a person and/or another vehicle because I wasn't paying enough attention. A camera wouldn't have helped any.

On the flip side, WAY too many of the new cars have horrendous outward vision, especially to the rear and rear quarters with tiny rear windows (and dark tint on most "crossover" type vehicles), and a belt line that belongs on a 70 year old guy with suspenders. I'd back over my own house in one of those things! :cool:

The backup camera is really a solution to current design trends, IMHO. Personally, I think there should be mandates on the outward field of view from the driver's seat. Anyone here sit in a new Challenger? I felt like I was sitting in a garbage can (no, not just because it was a Chrysler product...:D) - I couldn't see the corners of the car no matter what, and I'm 6' tall.

Who knows if the cameras will make a difference? I got lucky - my Mom backed over my Spinout BigWheel with our '77 Pinto wagon - I wasn't on it, thankfully. Woulda been a crummy day if I had been.
 

VeeDubTDI

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Chris B said:
The backup camera is really a solution to current design trends, IMHO. Personally, I think there should be mandates on the outward field of view from the driver's seat. Anyone here sit in a new Challenger? I felt like I was sitting in a garbage can (no, not just because it was a Chrysler product...) - I couldn't see the corners of the car no matter what, and I'm 6' tall.
Solution: mount a camera on every corner!! ;)
 

Dunno513

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Years ago the car co. fought seat belts said it would cost to much and no one would buy their cars then they fought collapsible steering columns costs hundreds of dollars no one would buy cars. Then they fought emissions would raze the price thousands of dollars we can’t compete.
Exactly why we NEED someone looking out for US. Too bad the folks who swing right never consider this.

The GMC Acadia we are looking at has a backup camera display built right into the rearview mirror. Standard feature. No need for the LCD display like someone else commented on

As for those who say that this is somehow intruding into their freedoms... pfft... but then again.. there will always be those who like to complain, but never offer up a better solution... at least a better "reasonable" solution. Either help with progress. or get out of the way I say...
 
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kjclow

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Unless you own a Chevy truck! Then you can survive anything, just like in the commercial that Ford succsessfully got them to pull.
 

supton

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As for those who say that this is somehow intruding into their freedoms... pfft... but then again.. there will always be those who like to complain, but never offer up a better solution... at least a better "reasonable" solution. Either help with progress. or get out of the way I say...
At the risk of being political, I think those of us arguing against this are offering what we think is a reasonable solution. That is, if you want to pay for that camera, so be it: order it and/or buy a vehicle for yourself with it. Not only that, but there may be vehicles that do not need it. Yet a mandate applies to all, without exception.

Not only that, but there was some thinking that basically said, it was just about to be come a standard feature anyhow. Try buying a car without a/c these days. I guess maybe a/c should be mandated too? That would be progress, right? Mandatory air conditioning, power windows and locks for all cars?
 

velociT

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Unless you own a Chevy truck! Then you can survive anything, just like in the commercial that Ford succsessfully got them to pull.
They pulled it? God, they are a predictable bunch of p*****s.

I remember when they spent $2 million and destroyed two C6's only to pull the Guy Ritchie ad after 48 hours.
 

MrMopar

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At the risk of being political, I think those of us arguing against this are offering what we think is a reasonable solution. That is, if you want to pay for that camera, so be it: order it and/or buy a vehicle for yourself with it. Not only that, but there may be vehicles that do not need it. Yet a mandate applies to all, without exception.
Yes, the blanket mandate is overkill. Car makers and the aftermarket offering these cameras is the solution that already exists.

Try buying a car without a/c these days.
Heh, it can be done.

The Hyundai salesman that sold me my car in 2009 DID have a non-A/C Accent on the lot for the $9,970 MSRP. I immediately stopped him and said "Look, I know that I'm swimming in cheap-infested waters here, but please do not show me a car without A/C. This is the USA. I'm rich enough to afford A/C."
 

Dunno513

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At the risk of being political, I think those of us arguing against this are offering what we think is a reasonable solution. That is, if you want to pay for that camera, so be it: order it and/or buy a vehicle for yourself with it. Not only that, but there may be vehicles that do not need it. Yet a mandate applies to all, without exception.

Not only that, but there was some thinking that basically said, it was just about to be come a standard feature anyhow. Try buying a car without a/c these days. I guess maybe a/c should be mandated too? That would be progress, right? Mandatory air conditioning, power windows and locks for all cars?
Under this reasonable line of thinking... I should have the say if seatbelts are standard features since I decide if I want to use them or not.

It's about safety folks... I don't hear anyone complaining about the cost of seatbelts or airbags.... ?DOH!!! Airbags kill kids...:rolleyes:
 
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jprine

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^ I know many who complain about airbags.. Pretty much everyone I know doesn't want them except for my mom. I know lots of short people and they are not safe for them and have to get the dealer to disable them. Every time I know someone who had a airbag go off they are complaining that it broke the windshield and it went off in some minor accident.. You going to say they are a great safety feature that helps and its worth it? well how come no race car ever uses air bags and they survive much harsher wrecks... "they have roll cages and 6 point harnesses!" why not mandate that on every car since we like to mandate things?

Anyway back to the camera thing, I agree with most of you.. cars that need them already have them or you can put them on yourself, mandate is stupid.
 
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