There are definitely cars where they’re factory installed, like a lot of Ford vehicles and some models of various other cars. Also really large cars tend to have something similar, although they typically have an entire separate dedicated blind spot mirror.
I actually had the thought to buy one of these because a lot of rental cars have them (factory-installed) and I was annoyed that my own car didn’t.
As far as I can tell, these are and have always been legal in the US (it’s illegal for the main mirror to be convex, but adding an additional convex mirror is legal).
Newer cars are less likely to have these because they have fancier blind spot detection systems.
I find it confusing that they were never standard, but I get the impression that it’s a mix of:
Adding more parts to a factory mirror costs more (especially at the higher-quality people expect from factory parts)
Buyers don’t care (or the ones who do will buy a $5 stick-on)
Regulators don’t care
I do find this confusing though, since it doesn’t seem like anyone ever really argued that they’re bad, but also car manufacturers mostly don’t act like they’re important. I wonder if it has to do with the lack of direct research on how they affect crash risk.
Ah that all makes sense. I didn’t realize that some cars have them factory installed. That makes me feel very confident that the fact that their not commonplace isn’t actually some sort of fence protecting against some unknown thing.
There are definitely cars where they’re factory installed, like a lot of Ford vehicles and some models of various other cars. Also really large cars tend to have something similar, although they typically have an entire separate dedicated blind spot mirror.
I actually had the thought to buy one of these because a lot of rental cars have them (factory-installed) and I was annoyed that my own car didn’t.
As far as I can tell, these are and have always been legal in the US (it’s illegal for the main mirror to be convex, but adding an additional convex mirror is legal).
Newer cars are less likely to have these because they have fancier blind spot detection systems.
I find it confusing that they were never standard, but I get the impression that it’s a mix of:
Adding more parts to a factory mirror costs more (especially at the higher-quality people expect from factory parts)
Buyers don’t care (or the ones who do will buy a $5 stick-on)
Regulators don’t care
I do find this confusing though, since it doesn’t seem like anyone ever really argued that they’re bad, but also car manufacturers mostly don’t act like they’re important. I wonder if it has to do with the lack of direct research on how they affect crash risk.
Ah that all makes sense. I didn’t realize that some cars have them factory installed. That makes me feel very confident that the fact that their not commonplace isn’t actually some sort of fence protecting against some unknown thing.