While I would much rather have better visibility, sometimes the lower visitbility changes are also made for safety reasons. Check out this article from 2009 that Edmunds did about losing visibility.InlinePaul wrote:It is odd that the car manufacturers are relying more and more on technology for safety and then compromising real world safety by raising beltlines and making glass smaller.Beltlines get higher and read glass gets smaller.
ClutchDisc, don't take what Watkins is saying personally. He didn't call you dumb, he just disagreed with what you said. However, you drive a small pick up truck. Do you always leave the tailgate up or down? If you leave it down the whole time (or it doesn't exist - such as my father in law's F250) then your visibility probably wouldn't improve much with a back up camera. But even in my Honda Civic, just about the smallest, most average car you can own, there are places I physically cannot see when looking backwards without getting out of the car and walking to the back. A backup camera is typically installed right above the license plate which means you get to see everything that is cut off in your normal sightline going straight back from the driver's seat.
A backup camera should NEVER replace physically turning your head and looking around, but there honestly isn't really an argument with any validity outside of MAYBE cost as to why every single car shouldn't have one just to ensure nothing is right under your back bumper before you start to back up. Even if you personally don't have to worry about kids, pets, or random objects behind your vehicle (the safety reasons for one), they are super useful for backing into parking spaces, hooking up trailers, and parallel parking. They give you more data than you previously had to make a better decision about moving your vehicle. How is that a bad thing?
Paul: go build a Model A by hand and tell me it isn't still complicated