Backup cameras are going to become critical beyond "learn to drive properly" very soon. My college aged son has literally never driven a car without a backup camera. I taught him to use his mirrors after checking the camera for obstacles the mirrors can't see but I'm sure he's already developed the habit of simply relying on the camera. I'm pretty much there and have 30+ years of driving without them.

Where I live you could fail your driver's test if you look at the rearview camera while reversing. You can glance at it before you start the manoeuvre but if you take your eyes off the road while the vehicle is in motion, you get the silent note taking.

I usually look at the mirrors rather than the road?

Some cars are designed around having that camera in exchange for rear visibility. Generally for better aerodynamics. It likely pays for itself in fuel pretty quickly.

My understanding is that it's partly motivated by rollover crash safety -- with smaller windows in the back, they can make those pillars sturdier.

That said, I'd much rather have a backup display in my rear-view mirror than a giant touch screen

A backup camera is required safety equipment (at time of sale) on new cars.

Great, another unneeded feature forced down our throats at additional cost to who? You guessed it, consumers!

Don't get me started on turn signals! Who's paying for these features? That's right, Joe Consumer. People just need to learn how to use hand signals.

Turn signals are not what makes a car expensive. Look at BMWs.

You could tell me BMW's ship without turn signals and I'd believe you.

I know BMW turn signals are a meme (with good reason...), but I've noticed the exact same behavioral trend with Lexus drivers as well. It's really just those two makes in particular.

Great, another feature that will save dozens to hundreds of lives (disproportionately of young children) every year, while adding only a few bucks to the bill of materials for cars that already have a display screen.

I do wish parents would stop teaching kids to take the short route over the carpark on the way to school. They save a couple of meters but walk behind cars backing out of the car garages... The back camera is handy but you won't see them if they walk on your side of the lane, too close to the 90 degree edge of the car.

And to make it more fun, our car has an overlay on the left edge with a top down view of the sensors around the car. That one blocks the view completely in that edge. And has a black background window that slowly fades away.

I think parents who have lost their children to cars backing out of driveways while children are playing on the sidewalk would disagree with your description of 'unneeded'

It wouldn't be an issue if we went back to making cars small enough you could see out of them. Legally requiring a certain level of rear visibility would be a good thing (and, sure, in some cases a camera might be the best way to achieve that) - and throw in some pedestrian collision safety requirements while you're at it. Legally mandating the expensive gadget-based way of doing things seems horribly shortsighted.

You'll never come close to getting the visibility that you can with a backup camera. With a decent backup camera the only blind spots are actually underneath the car itself. You can't possibly match that without a camera on anything other than a motorcycle. Setting the legal requirement of visibility without mandating a camera would either make it completely impractical to avoid a camera or you'd be sacrificing visibility by making the mandate achievable with only mirrors and windows.

> Legally mandating the expensive gadget-based way of doing things seems horribly shortsighted.

Your perspective is biased. If the backup camera had been invented before you were born and the automobile after you had been born than you would consider it only logical and familiar to see backup cameras on the wagons and horse drawn carts that you were used to but you would consider automobiles to be 'the expensive gadget-based way of doing things [that] seems horribly shortsighted.'

If backup cameras weren't expensive gadgets then I wouldn't consider them expensive gadgets, sure. But they are, so I do. When the facts change, I change my mind; what do you do?

That's classical victim blaming. We are all humans and make mistakes.Some mistakes only result in some property damage or money lost and some, like running over a person (doesn't even have to be a child, don't forget that there are handicapped people who might not be able to react fast enough to get out of that situation), can't be corrected afterwards. Handwaving that away because some people like to save a few dollars is not a great idea.

By your logic we could also hand everybody heroin and an assault rifle and abolish most laws, people watch TV after all and therefore can be taught not to do bad things.

This is true. Any kid who is capable of naming themselves has also opted out of child safety. The two characteristics are irreversibly linked.

In addition, the existence of kids who are capable of naming themselves must mean that other kids should be bumper mush. This is the only way to preserve the American Way.

If anything, it's the drivers who are the real victims here.

Actually, it’s the shareholders, who have to bear the costs of these expensive lawsuits from the parents of these irresponsible children! Won’t anyone think of the shareholders?

Yeah, drives me nuts. Some cars have really great rear visibility and should be exempt from the requirement. I understand it on SUVs and stuff though.

Wouldn't the entire rear of the car and the rear seats have to be glass to exempt a car from having the camera?

A bigger rear window wouldn't have let me see the toddler who'd wandered a short distance off from his parents in a car park and was standing right behind my car.

Look at the split rear window on the Prius; it does exactly that. If the driver is tall and turning their neck, or short and using the center mirror, the sight-line from the driver's seat extends below the rear seats and down into what would ordinarily be the tailgate.

You can't see the pavement under the bumper, but you can see a kid on a tricycle right behind the car.

Personally I find rear view cameras to be quite disorienting. The view is quite distorted by the wide-angle lens and it's not clear where it can see and where it can't. Do I still have blind spots if I look at only the screen? Where are they? With a mirror I get an intuitive sense of what it can and can't see. Also, I expect the view to move when I move my head like in a mirror, which is part of what makes it so easy to get a sense of where the mirror can see. I suppose someday I'll get used to cameras, but today is not that day.

Do they still sell any cars with good rear visibility?

My hatchback has about the best you could get (and they don't sell it here anymore) and I still added a backup camera, it's very useful.

I used to pride myself on my ability to fit into small parking spaces and parallel park even big vans pretty precisely, and a backup camera blew all that out of the water because I can fit anywhere now.

My little GTI with a backup camera made me an invincible parking machine.

Why? You have a screen, the cameras are so small as to be undetectable, they add safety and they provide much better coverage than mirrors do.

It also enables auto-parking and other enhancements while not inhibiting anyone that wants to perform those functions manually.

Well, you could also say the same about seat belts and ABS. I very much prefer cars with cameras at this point.

Also demanded by customers. A well implemented backup camera is much better than trying to use a small rear view mirror or twisting around to look out a small rear window. The backup camera can give you a wider field of view including low down where a small child might be. It is also much brighter in the dark than your eyes normally see.

This doesn’t mean that I am not also checking the surroundings but the backup camera is such a big improvement that I would not buy any car without one.

It’s not unneeded, it’s there to prevent you from killing someone, just like every other required safety system.

you're getting a ton of criticism, but I have two cars, and only one has a backup camera. I reverse more safely in the car with no backup camera.

I've caught myself just backing up without thinking about it in the car with the backup camera. never done that in the old-school mirrors car.

I don't know if there are any studies that back up backup cameras.

I've read that people ride more dangerously, and are tested by car drivers less carefully, when wearing a cycle helmet. Perhaps there's a similar effect here -- I think we do tend to rely on safety equipment and ignore due diligence.