Math professor's side mirror that eliminates 'blind spot' receives US patent

Re:Math professor's side mirror that eliminates 'blind spot'... by archangel_one on Friday June 08, 2012 @04:18AM (#4083281)

Curved mirrors are more efficient in one sense but tends to lead people to misjudge distances. Presumably the government think that showing a misleading picture may be worse than not showing one at all, which is not complete idiocy. This mirror apparently doesn't really suffer from that problem, but the legislation didn't anticipate it - which isn't really surprising, it's hardly realistic to expect them to foresee this development.

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Re:Math professor's side mirror that eliminates 'blind spot'... by Confusion on Friday June 08, 2012 @06:35AM (#4083588)

Any mirror tends to lead people to misjudge distances and speeds. Mirrors are not things we naturally understand and you have to get used to judging how far behind you something is, while looking in front of you. If you're looking in a mirror and something comes in your direction very fast, you tend to step back... directly into the thing coming at you.

Curved mirrors also take getting used to, but I doubt it has ever been shown that the number of errors people make because of using curved mirrors is larger than the number of errors people make while using regular mirrors.

These kinds of rules get introduced because someone thinks "this makes sense", other people reading it think "this makes sense" and nobody with enough actual knowledge about the subject, who cares enough and has enough lobbying power, goes "now wait a second, this is not right".

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Re:Math professor's side mirror that eliminates 'blind spot'... by hahainternet on Friday June 08, 2012 @06:59AM (#4083626)

You seem to be doing exactly what you're condemning them for. Just because your opinion differs from theirs is no reason to assume they are incorrect or that there are no studies involved.

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Re:Math professor's side mirror that eliminates 'blind spot'... by Confusion on Friday June 08, 2012 @11:26AM (#4084624)

I was explaining that the common argument (curved mirrors cause mistakes) doesn't make any sense (because other mirrors also cause mistakes) and how that argument could lead to a law anyway (because people are very used to regular mirrors and the mistakes they cause). You're reading a judgment into that, but I don't think I wrote one.

I don't condemn anyone for taking decisions based on what seems to make sense, when the stakes aren't very high and in the absence of anyone telling them otherwise. We can't expect decisionmakers to be experts in everything and we can't expect them to hire experts for every little detail. As long as things get changed when the facts are presented, I'm not complaining.

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Re:Math professor's side mirror that eliminates 'blind spot'... by joshuahedlund on Friday June 08, 2012 @08:04AM (#4083776)

> but I doubt it has ever been shown that the number of errors people make because of using curved mirrors is larger than the number of errors people make while using regular mirrors.

I'm even more interested in the number of errors people make from curved mirrors compared to the number of errors people make from having no mirrors at all (regarding the blind spot area)

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Re:Math professor's side mirror that eliminates 'blind spot'... by einhverfr on Friday June 08, 2012 @05:03AM (#4083373)

Indeed the picture in the article immediately made me think "How do I know how far those cars are away?" The objects in that mirror seem a lot closer than they appear, which strikes me as a different danger.

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