Compare an 80s Caprice, 80s Nova, and similar to any car today, and I think you will clearly see the rear visibility today is much worse.

There were some cars with better visibility. I would question the caprice being one, but generally smaller cars did have better visibility. Such that something like a Kia Soul has ok visibility. Still is absolutely nothing compared to using the backup camera. And the side mirror blind spot detectors are pretty awesome. On all cars.

The backup camera has limited field of view and most require you in a heads down position. This is not helpful for maintaining awareness of your surroundings. It will not help you see a bicyclist speeding by. The blind spot detectors can fail and lead to a false sense of safety, especially on multilateral roads.

Show me the FARS data that supports these as actually saving lives.

Are you trolling? The FARS data does call out the same concerns you list, but in a "we can do even better" way. The fatality and accident numbers have absolutely gone down with backup cameras.

This reminds me of when my father would try to argue that seat belts make people worse drivers. There is a logic to what you are saying. But it doesn't pan out with the data.

Show me the data. FARS rear impact pedestrian fatalities for 2017 (before the mandate) was 71. In 2023 (latest data) it was 68. There were still some percentage of backup cameras prior to 2017 so I checked 2006 and the number was 74. If they were really effective I'd expect a much larger drop.

https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/People/PeoplePedestrians.aspx

Your dad's argument about seatbelts is that it will make people worse drivers. My argument is that backup cameras don't reduce fatalities because there are few to begin with, involve low speeds, and the data hasn't show any real improvement.

The point, if you want to save lives, let's start where the biggest savings are. Those are better driving testing and education (I do support these) and breathalyzer interlock devices (support these for offenders, not universal).

There are studies where they compared the same vehicles that show it has reduced the numbers. They can go into the actual calculations for how they got that, if you want to see it.

You seem to be asking why you don't see this directly in the data, with a number going down. But you do realize the the number of drivers and miles driven have both increased in that timeframe, right? Such that, if the safety had remained the same, the number of incidents would have gone up. Pretty much by definition, that means a number remaining the same means something kept it from growing.

How about the number of kids playing outside? If that number goes down, that would affect the results too. Again, if those studies exist to compare results, show me.

Just googling "impact of rear view cameras on car safety" brings up the standard studies. They were modest in impact, but the cohort analysis did show results with nobody rejecting their stats.

A search for those exact words didn't being up studies for me. One of the articles on the first page even talks about the potential dangers. At this point I assume you're teolling swine multiple attempts at asking for studies on real-world data hasn't yielded nothing of value from you. Goodbye.

https://www.aarp.org/auto/driver-safety/dangerous-reliance-c...

Apologies, I assumed you'd have to play with the terms a bit, especially with Google being personalized nowadays. For me, the first result on that search is https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/bibliography/ref/2130, which shows about a 16% reduction in backing crash rates. Which could easily conform to the numbers you were showing, as the number of licensed drivers increased by about the same percent. (I'm assuming miles driven and similar would have grown about the same.)

Reading your link appears to be more fear and caution than data showing things are worse? There is a broken link that ostensibly looks at lane assist and how it can have problems in bad weather. But nothing that says rear view cameras actively cause trouble? Just a fair callout that you shouldn't exclusively rely on them.