Wing mirrors on cars

[rbowman]

Mine certainly doesn't.

[rbowman]

What do you drive? The Starship Enterprise?

[Huge]

[19 lines snipped]

I turn the auto-dipping off, also, since it doesn't dip soon enough and as a result you get flashed by oncoming drivers all the time.

[mechanic]

Those bleeping parking sensors are a Godsend.

[alan_m]

Mirrors are cheap and cameras require some form of illumination at night and possibly be rendered useless in conditions where the sun is low in the sky directly behind you. Depending on where the displays for cameras are fitted screen contrast in all lighting conditions can also be a problem.

If the current state of the back of my car is representative of diving on muddy/salted roads in mixed rain/light snow conditions then the cameras would be totally obscured by road dirt.

[tim...]

because no-ones tried that in court yet

tim

[Bob Eager]

A UK Ford. Never mind, the USA will catch up one day.

[Ash Burton]

Because manufacturers of cars made in LHD countries can't be bothered to change them over for the UK market perhaps?

[Tim Streater]

No, it's etched on the mirror to which it applies. Thinking more about it I suspect it actually said more like "things seen in this mirror look further way than they really are". The US drivers' side door mirror is *flat*, not *convex* so you wouldn't etch that on that one. The US passengers' side door mirror is *convex*, not *flat*, so that is where you *would* etch it.

Getting a clue, now, some of you?

We don't have this problem in the UK, since we tend not to put statements of the bleeding obvious on things [*]. Neither do we insist that the drivers' side door mirror be flat - that's the job of the inside rear-view mirror.

[*] although sadly the country is tending that way ever since no-win-no-fee lawyers came into existence.

[Davey]

My memory of driving mostly GM cars in the US is that the curvy passenger mirror usually had two different curvatures, separated by a dotted line. This was to provide coverage of both the area along the side of the car, and also a broader view for a vehicles in adjacent lanes, seen in the outside section of the mirror. The idiot message was indeed etched into that mirror.

I found the whole idea useless and confusing.

[soup]

Shhh! Don't give them ideas.

[Bob Eager]

Strangely, that describes my driver's side mirror in the UK.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Cameras. Gotta have a camera. My new car has four of them so you can see all around. Split screen shows either the front or back depending on the gear, but it also give what looks like an overhead view using all the cameras. Parking anywhere is a breeze like that.

[Ed Pawlowski]

You need a better car. Mine dip very well. At times I wish they came up a bit faster though on a curvy, hilly road.

[Davey]

That is indeed strange!

[Clare Snyder]

Never seen that on a factory GM mirror - - -

[Davey]

I must have seen it on hundreds of them, including some that I owned myself. I can't believe that they were add-ons on both leased GM cars and many rentals.

Ah, here is an interesting cite, although it doesn't mention the split:

But here:

it mentions:

"Many OEM mirrors on the vehicles today have a split lens to assist in blind spot viewing. Upper end models have sensors that also inform the driver of vehicles approaching in the blind spot. As with most options, eventually they work their way down to the standard models."

[Colonel Edmund J. Burke]

If the current state....... Jesus! What an arrogant asshole!

[NY]

Is this a difference between US and European cars, I wonder. On many (though not all) British-, French- and German-made cars that I have driven, the mirror is divided into two parts: the part nearer the window is plane but the part further from the window is convex - sometimes there is a hard line between the two, sometimes it's a gradual change from one to the other.

I think that often both driver's and passenger's mirrors are the same plane/convex mixture, which saves manufacturers making two different sets of mirrors, for RHD and LHD markets. Certainly I've never been conscious of objects being two different sizes in the driver's and in the passenger's mirrors.

Is there a rule in the US that the driver's mirror must only be plane and cannot incorporate a convex panel?

[James Wilkinson Sword]

What year was it built in? It seems from reading this group that Americans keep their cars a lot longer. Perhaps the UK annual safety test is more stringent. Most cars over about 12 years old are not worth keeping on the road here. It costs more to make them pass the test than to just scrap them and buy one a few years younger. In Japan I think there's some crazy law that all cars must be scrapped at 5 years old. I think most are sold to other countries, like India.