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Comment by mymythisisthis | Hacker News Reader

It wasn't until the 1980s that a passenger side door mirror became mandatory. I think that these will be replaced with camera. A camera is cheaper than a car mirror at this point. It'll make the car slightly more aerodynamic.

Eventually a car maker will produce an economy car without a rear window. Glass is expensive. People just end up using the camera system anyway. It'll do better in a roll-over test, without the rear glass.

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I live in a place with an actual winter. You know, the kind with sub-freezing temperatures and thigh-deep snow cover for a significant part of the year. It is my experience that under such conditions external cameras on cars are useless. The optics are almost always obscured by some form of the weather or road hazard. I certainly don't want my life to depend on technology that only works in fair weather, since that's when I least need it.

There are breakthroughs in short wave infrared cameras that could help in that situation. In the cold I think you'll appreciate not having glass windows, although that sounds unthinkable since we still put passenger windows in airplanes...

I've driven some smaller, compact cars, and I swear the rear window was just decorative (small, obscured by the back seats). I can picture them being eliminated in some sub-compact hatchbacks.

It is possible to add washers to cameras - some high end models already have them.

That sounds remarkably like Marie Antoinette's "let them eat cake" solution.

The answer to the problem of you life depending on complex high-maintenance parts that do not operate under normal environmental and operation conditions is not to throw increasingly more complex and high-maintenance parts at it. Safety is not only for those willing to pay extra for it. The 737 MAX 8 should not be held up as an exemplar of good practice but as a stern warning.

> A camera is cheaper than a car mirror at this point. It'll make the car slightly more aerodynamic.

It also requires electronics, a screen, wires and electricity to operate. A rube goldberg contraption that can fail in any number of ways. While my existing boring low tech mirrors just reflects existing photons without any aforementioned nonsense. Just why?

Can you elaborate please ? I am not sure how can a mirror be more expensive than a camera and a screen ?

Most of the mirrors have several servo motors, to adjust them from within the car. Good quality glass is also expensive. Cameras have come down in price. Everybody now expects a cameras added to car anyway, so manufacturers are installing cameras and mirrors.

At highway speeds they add drag to the car. Car manufacturers are trying to make their MPG seem low.

There are already cars that use cameras instead of mirrors. I think the electric mini does.

My first car was a 1991 Civic hatchback. It was not built with a passenger door mirror.

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