Let's assume that these screens eliminate 100% of all deaths and accidental injury from backing up.
My point is that does not outweigh the number of deaths that are caused when the screen distracts the driver and causes a crash. This happens frequently, at higher speeds, and with worse consequences. Worse, I bet these crashes are grossly under-reported because no-one is going to admit being distracted by a screen, and so accepting liability.
As for gut instinct, mine has nothing to do with it. I have been in enough close calls with other distracted drivers, and I have seen the PSAs about not driving distracted, to know that it's a 10 kdeath/yr issue, not a 100 death/yr issue.
I'm going to disengage because there's something about this whole interaction that doesn't sit right with me.
You could disable the screens while driving forward or at higher speed if you think that's important for safety. But we shouldn't remove them.
And I feel the same for the baseband chip (phone and data), speaker, noise-notification in phones. Yes I'm punishing passengers, waze, etc, but the #1 (observed) danger these days to me, cyclist and pedestrian, is the driver's phone. It's such a problem, I feel we're not being serious about it.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/811024.pdf
> a statistically significant 28 percent reduction in crashes
You:
> You still have not responded to my central claim that these screens claim far, far more lives than they save.
Them:
> no evidence to support the hypothesis that driver’s backing behavior (i.e. speed and acceleration) was influenced by the presence of absence of an RV system
People said the kind of things that you're saying about seatbelts when they came out - they thought they'd get trapped and didn't want to wear them. At some point you have to listen to the studies not just gut instinct.