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Comment by yumraj | Hacker News Reader

Two comments:

1) Driver's rear view is solved by using a camera, but what about rear passengers. Rear window provides natural light to come in. It might get pretty dark inside without it.

2) How will it impact the DMV driving test? In a recent driving test for a kid, the instructor explicitly said that if the kid reversed by looking at the camera view in the screen, she will fail the kid. With this car, there is no rearview window, so reverse can only be done by looking at the camera view, there's no looking back while reversing.

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> if the kid reversed by looking at the camera view in the screen, she will fail the kid

That's interesting, my compact sedan doesn't have a camera, and you can still see something in the rear view mirror, so I feel perfectly comfortable reversing into tight spaces or over longer distances.

Sometimes I drive rentals (different Toyotas) that have cameras, and I vastly prefer the camera for reversing. When leaving a parking spot, you can immediately see the cars in the lane you're reversing into. You can see directly behind the rear bumper (kids, dogs, forgotten baggage). Running over someone's kid in a busy parking lot is something I'm really terrified of, and the camera eases my mind a lot.

When I did a driving test in the US (which was admittedly a complete joke compared to a UK one I did two decades earlier) I explicitly got told that it was fine to use the camera alone.

Yes America wouldn't have anywhere near the number of drivers that it does if Americans had to pass the British driving test.

Have you ever had to reverse around a corner, since you did the test?

That's no longer part of the test (removed 2017).

Why on earth would you do that on a test? I can't think of many more dangerous things to do in a car than reversing while going around a corner!

Ad 1: the glass roof might take care of that.

Maybe its not a big difference long term, but a camera is 2D, whereas a mirror provides a 3D image with depth, allowing to assess distances naturally. It also has a much better resolution and dynamic range, works much better in the dark, etc.

Meh, a mirror might have a better resolution but my eyesight is limited and I can make out more details in a camerafeed presented on a large display.

Haven't seen a 20" rear view mirror yet.

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