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backup cameras mandatory in all new vehicles

28,148 544 March 31, 2014 at 12:13 PM in Autos (4)
Automakers will be required to install backup cameras in most new vehicles by May 2018, a federal agency announced Monday. [cnn.com]

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finalized a long-awaited rule requiring all new cars, SUVs, and minivans, as well as some new small trucks and buses to carry rear visibility technology.

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Joined Mar 2009
Schrödinger's Frog
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Frogstar
05-14-2014 at 12:22 PM.
05-14-2014 at 12:22 PM.
Quote from The Llama :
Not you, frog! Not you!
How in the hell does a driver take responsibility for the raising of the children that he may or may not hit?
The driver doesn't, the parent of the kid they backed over should have.
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Mr llama llama
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The Llama
05-14-2014 at 12:29 PM.
05-14-2014 at 12:29 PM.
Quote from Frogstar :
The driver doesn't, the parent of the kid they backed over should have.
Yeah, that's my point.
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Joined Mar 2009
Schrödinger's Frog
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Frogstar
05-14-2014 at 12:32 PM.
05-14-2014 at 12:32 PM.
Quote from The Llama :
Yeah, that's my point.
And mine. If you're a parent, don't let your obnoxious snot-nosed punk hang out in your neighbor's driveway. If they're old enough to roam the sidewalks unattended, they're old enough to know to look for cars. It's not like I'm not speaking without experience, I've been a parent for something like eighteen years and hardly any of my kids have ever been backed over. I mean, like, a statistically insignificant number.
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Mr llama llama
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The Llama
05-14-2014 at 12:34 PM.
05-14-2014 at 12:34 PM.
Quote from Frogstar :
And mine. If you're a parent, don't let your obnoxious snot-nosed punk hang out in your neighbor's driveway. If they're old enough to roam the sidewalks unattended, they're old enough to know to look for cars. It's not like I'm not speaking without experience, I've been a parent for something like eighteen years and hardly any of my kids have ever been backed over. I mean, like, a statistically insignificant number.
And all of that has 0 to do with the unfortunate driver who runs into a kid with less responsible parents. You can't control the parenting, but you CAN control the blind spot in the car.
I am, however, proud of your standardly deviant children.
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Schrödinger's Frog
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Frogstar
05-14-2014 at 12:40 PM.
05-14-2014 at 12:40 PM.
Quote from The Llama :
And all of that has 0 to do with the unfortunate driver who runs into a kid with less responsible parents. You can't control the parenting, but you CAN control the blind spot in the car.
I am, however, proud of your standardly deviant children.
AND SOCIETY LOSES! Ranting
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Mr llama llama
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The Llama
05-14-2014 at 12:41 PM.
05-14-2014 at 12:41 PM.
Quote from Frogstar :
AND SOCIETY LOSES! Ranting
Society lost so long ago, I think we've forgotten when it was.
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Schrödinger's Frog
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Frogstar
05-14-2014 at 12:42 PM.
05-14-2014 at 12:42 PM.
I'll bet it was a Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
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redmaxx
05-14-2014 at 04:09 PM.
05-14-2014 at 04:09 PM.
Quote from Frogstar :
None of those are really related to "making sure your kids don't play in the driveway behind the car".
The hell...? I was referencing the fact that if you make the argument "we don't need x/y/z safety feature if people would just drive more safely", then you reduce everything to little to no safety features.

It's not even necessarily related to playing in the driveway behind a car. Kid walking down the sidewalk, driver backs out at the moment the kid crosses the blindspot, they're screwed. No horrible parenting involved, no idiot kid involved, just bad luck that could be prevented with this safety feature.

Please, stop making arguments to absurdity.

It's also a faulty argument because humans make mistakes. Innocent children should not have to pay for an inadvertent error on the part of their parent or another adult. It's a simple fact, you cannot watch your children 100% of the time, 24x7x365. So you need safety features.

Quote :
As a matter of fact, cars disable the airbag if you have a child sitting up front, and now you're not supposed to put them up front until they're more or less "small adult" size.
And you're correct, we wouldn't need all this safety crap, but since our driving test is more or less a joke in this country...
Yes, it is a joke. But that's not the point. Other nations with better testing still require these safety features. Because guess what? The economic losses of death and injury due to preventable accidents from safety features is more expensive than the cost to mandate the features. So screw your "freedoms", they never existed.

Please, present a rational argument for why this safety feature should not be mandatory in the context of improving safety, not on some argument that has no logical basis in fact.

Quote :
I don't think backing over kids qualifies as a "road accident"?
Crazy It certainly does. At a minimum, it's a vehicular accident, does it seriously matter if it happens on a public road? I guess the kid's life isn't worth anything if the accident occurs on private property?
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Last edited by redmaxx May 14, 2014 at 04:12 PM.
Joined Apr 2004
Mr llama llama
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The Llama
05-14-2014 at 05:40 PM.
05-14-2014 at 05:40 PM.
Quote from redmaxx :

Yes, it is a joke. But that's not the point. Other nations with better testing still require these safety features. Because guess what? The economic losses of death and injury due to preventable accidents from safety features is more expensive than the cost to mandate the features. So screw your "freedoms", they never existed.

Please, present a rational argument for why this safety feature should not be mandatory in the context of improving safety, not on some argument that has no logical basis in fact.



Crazy It certainly does. At a minimum, it's a vehicular accident, does it seriously matter if it happens on a public road? I guess the kid's life isn't worth anything if the accident occurs on private property?
To the first bolded point, they really don't. That's one of the reasons cars in Europe get such better gas mileage - they're far lighter without a lot of the safety stuff that's required here.
To the second, there is kind of a distinction between a road accident and one that happens at 5mph or less in a parked car situation. Has nothing to do with the value of life. Just a semantic point of where the accidents are happening.
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Iaaaiws
05-14-2014 at 06:53 PM.
05-14-2014 at 06:53 PM.
Quote from redmaxx :
Second, to answer your other objections about the cameras themselves, the cameras are not meant to allow you to back up by staring at the dashboard. The cameras are designed to give you another information source so you can determine if it is safe to back up. Used properly, the cameras are safe and are guaranteed to improve the safety of driving. The reason being, no matter how you adjust your mirrors, every car has a blind spot behind the trunk/hatch that you cannot see into. The camera fills that hole and does so in a way sensors can't. Sensors are more likely to have false alarms and go off for things that wouldn't pose an issue for you backing up
Quote from redmaxx :
It's not an issue of whether or not I've backed over anything or you've backed over anything. It's an aggregate issue, one that injures or kills 50 children every week. As I mentioned earlier, the camera is the better option, since it prevents drivers from ignoring it due to too many "boy who cried wolf" incidences. All you have to do is glance at the camera just before backing up and momentarily from time to time as you back up. If you already back up using your mirrors this will not detract from your safety at all.
Sure, they are "designed" to be used as one of many tools to aid a driver to safely back up. Now, are they going to be used that way? The way I see and hear people talk about using them is as the primary way of seeing as they back up. The display is typically mounted on or in the dash and the driver focuses on that as they back up instead of glancing at it to make sure the path is clear and then looking over their shoulder or using their mirrors. That may save the baby who was accidentally left on the driveway behind the car but it really doesn't help the kid who is about to run into the path of the car from the side.
Want to make it a better safety item? Mount the display towards the rear of the vehicle so you can see it when you turn your head to look backwards. Then you can see the path of the car in the display while still being aware of approaching people or cars in your peripheral vision from the sides.

That's the problem with safety items that require the driver to be active to use--the driver is still the weak link and will find a way to screw it up. If there is a problem with backup sensors then make the technology better. My guess is that the technology is already there. If they can make cars that safely drive themselves like the Google car then I'm guessing they have the ability. I don't imagine that car is randomly stopping in the middle of the street due to false readings of something in its path.

As you said, humans make mistakes. Implementing safety items that require the driver to control the major part of its effectiveness isn't really the best answer.
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Iaaaiws
05-14-2014 at 07:15 PM.
05-14-2014 at 07:15 PM.
Quote from redmaxx :
What do you think the intent is then? If not to prevent accidents, then... what?
The intent? Votes I imagine. Most things done by government are done either to get votes or to get power. I'm not sure there is a lot of power to be directly gained here so it must be votes. It is an emotional response to the understandably distraught parents of kids who have been run over. Unfortunately emotional responses aren't always the best responses.



Quote from redmaxx :

Please, present a rational argument for why this safety feature should not be mandatory in the context of improving safety, not on some argument that has no logical basis in fact.


But where do you stop? What are the statistics of people injured or killed in drunk driving accidents compared to people getting run over by cars moving in reverse? My guess is those numbers are a lot higher. Why doesn't every car have a breathalyzer hooked up to the ignition by now? The technology has been there for a long time and is already used frequently for people with multiple drinking and driving convictions. Why would this not be a brilliant safety device on every car that should be mandated?

Navigational devices usually let you know what the speed limit is where you are driving; why not use that information and a governor to keep cars from exceeding the speed limit? Many accidents I see on the news are describes as involving "excessive speed". How many lives could be saved by regulating how fast a car can go in any given area?
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Mr llama llama
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The Llama
05-14-2014 at 08:34 PM.
05-14-2014 at 08:34 PM.
Quote from Iaaaiws :
The intent? Votes I imagine. Most things done by government are done either to get votes or to get power. I'm not sure there is a lot of power to be directly gained here so it must be votes. It is an emotional response to the understandably distraught parents of kids who have been run over. Unfortunately emotional responses aren't always the best responses.




But where do you stop? What are the statistics of people injured or killed in drunk driving accidents compared to people getting run over by cars moving in reverse? My guess is those numbers are a lot higher. Why doesn't every car have a breathalyzer hooked up to the ignition by now? The technology has been there for a long time and is already used frequently for people with multiple drinking and driving convictions. Why would this not be a brilliant safety device on every car that should be mandated?

Navigational devices usually let you know what the speed limit is where you are driving; why not use that information and a governor to keep cars from exceeding the speed limit? Many accidents I see on the news are describes as involving "excessive speed". How many lives could be saved by regulating how fast a car can go in any given area?
Not that those are bad points, but you don't NOT put in ANY safety features simply because you aren't going to put in ALL safety features. Your argument in reverse is: why not take out airbags and seat belts since we're not going to put in breathalysers and governors.
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Iaaaiws
05-14-2014 at 08:55 PM.
05-14-2014 at 08:55 PM.
Quote from The Llama :
Not that those are bad points, but you don't NOT put in ANY safety features simply because you aren't going to put in ALL safety features. Your argument in reverse is: why not take out airbags and seat belts since we're not going to put in breathalysers and governors.
Why not let the consumer decide instead of politics?

By the time the cameras are mandatory in 2018 do you really think many cars would not already have them? Several manufacturers are already making them standard equipment on all of their models. All the others would likely follow that trend without the government interfering. Making them mandatory will be more likely to limit what is available to what meets the standards rather than what people actually like and want.
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Mr llama llama
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The Llama
05-14-2014 at 09:00 PM.
05-14-2014 at 09:00 PM.
Quote from Iaaaiws :
Why not let the consumer decide instead of politics?

By the time the cameras are mandatory in 2018 do you really think many cars would not already have them? Several manufacturers are already making them standard equipment on all of their models. All the others would likely follow that trend without the government interfering. Making them mandatory will be more likely to limit what is available to what meets the standards rather than what people actually like and want.
Yeah, I have no problem with that. Just that for certain items in the past, regulation was the ONLY way to get them in cars.
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Iaaaiws
05-14-2014 at 09:37 PM.
05-14-2014 at 09:37 PM.
Seems to me an even more effective and far cheaper solution to reducing people getting run over by reversing vehicles would be to put a loud backup alarm on all cars like large trucks have. It is a passive safety device that doesn't require correct usage by the driver and attacks the problem at the source rather than trying to treat the symptom. A kid or an adult about to walk into the path of a car backing up isn't going to notice the display from a backup camera. However, they are far more likely to notice an alarm announcing that they are about to get run over. Why not work at getting the potential victim out of the path of danger rather than hoping the driver will be paying attention and be able to react in time to avoid hitting them?

It wouldn't be effective for the person running over the bicycle or garbage can left behind their car but that isn't a safety issue needing to be regulated anyway. It isn't going to help the infant left behind the vehicle in a car seat, but you really can't legislate away stupidity anyway, and can you really count on the person who is that careless to be diligently monitoring their backup camera anyway?

If the main goal was safety they would be looking for the best solution, not just the one that is an easier sell. And it is easier to sell a nifty camera with a cool display than it would be to sell an inexpensive but annoying alarm.
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