NHTSA to require backup cameras on all vehicles | Hacker News Reader

NHTSA to require backup cameras on all vehicles

usatoday.com

34 pointsmikestew52 comments

According to Wikipedia there are approximately 254 million passenger vehicles in the USA. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Uni...

Also there are approximately 15 million new cars sold per year.

http://m.nydailynews.com/1.1567645#bmb=1

At a cost of ~$100 per vehicle for these cameras that means to get the entire passenger fleet compliment with this law will cost 25.4 billion dollars and 1.5 billion per year in additional costs. The article states that they estimate 58-69 lives per year to be saved, round that up to 70. 70/1.5 billion and we are spending over $21.4 million per life saved. That seems absolute crazy to me. How many lives could be saved with that amount of money spent in a more efficent way?

The actual cost is lower; Some percentage, probably even a significant one, of existing car sales already have these cameras equipped. If the price drops and the feature is compelling anyway, I can see it being a tenth that in actual cost, which brings it into line with real life-saving programs. Preventing deaths is expensive.

My instinct was along your lines, though, and I'm not entirely certain that the whole idea isn't just a gift to automakers for yet another reason to jack up prices. What used to be a costly extra is now 'required'.

I think you are likely correct on the cost. I would honestly like to know what the most cost effective way is to save a life. My guess would be vaccines in 3rd world.

There is something that still bothers me about laws like these. A very vocal minority drives the cost up for everyone, while the effectiveness of the law is questionable. It is of course a tragedy when a young person is killed in an accident but is this really a good use of the government and law? People need to be careful when they are operating a car. Also who is going to argue against saving a toddlers life? That is probably a poor political move. This just seems like another sign of how weak willed our political system is at standing up for what is in the interest of the general public and not a vocal minority.

It's on the high end, but it's only a factor of three off of the roughly $7 million the EPA uses in cost-benefit analysis. Perhaps a bad call, but not wildly innumerate.

Not to mention that $100 per vehicle is probably wildly high. The quality on these things isn't great (and doesn't need to be). If I can buy a fully featured IP camera at a retail price of $50 complete with pan and tilt, I doubt car makers are going to pay more than $10 or so wholesale for a lesser camera with no networking and no motors. The screen is going to cost something too, but most cars already have those now.

hell, you can get a chinese android phone for $100 -- and that includes the camera and color display, plus all of the rest (battery, storage, wifi, wireless, gps, bluetooth, etc). Anyone who claims adding this to a car costs $100 is ridiculous.

$100, including labour, does not seem so incredible. Auto electricians may charge more than that per hour, too.

What does that have to do with manufacturing a car, or sliding in a prefabbed camera into an area of the car already covered with cabling (brake lights, backup lights, rear door open indicator switch)?

The grandparent touched on the costs for upgrading existing vehicles.

That would be weird if so, because the rule doesn't require adding it to existing vehicles, and nobody else is talking about upgrading existing vehicles. The important question regarding this rule is how much it costs to add a backup camera to a vehicle design for production of new units.

The raw parts cost may be less. But it'll have to be covered by new-car warranty so it can't be complete garbage. It will also have to be worked into the design of the car and the manufacturing process, which are one-time costs but they are costs. Automakers will also have to amortize in the expected cost of defending lawsuits and paying awards to car owners who will claim the camera failed causing them to have an accident, etc.

backup cameras are already designed into basically every new car there is; right now, it's an option not a requirement

You're not including the general cost savings from accident prevention. It's likely that this measure will significantly reduce some kinds of "fender benders".

yes, looking at lives saved seems like a rather silly metric to judge this by. Most accidents that happen while somebody is reversing probably cause a couple hundred dollars in damage and go un-reported.

It was expected that 73% of cars would have it anyway, so your numbers would be changed by that factor.

I really wish that, in addition to the camera, they'd include a sort of proximity cone (radar, sonic, something) too. Case in point:

Coworker of mine gets himself a Leaf - loves it to death. So, to partake of his joy, we all take a ride with him to Chipotle to grab lunch. Right next door to the restaurant in the strip mall is one of those UPS Pack-n-Ship places. We didn't pay it a lot of attention when we pulled in but right behind us, backed up to the front of the UPS store, is one of their short-length semi-trailers. Not an issue until we're backing out - dude came withing centimeters of smashing out his back window because he was relying on the camera which only showed the legs of the trailer and not the deck.

This isn't to say that the cameras aren't good, but they do have limitations and can lend a sense of false security.

I think I would use the camera to check clear for what it covers, but look over my shoulder for actual backing up. The camera isn't going to show cars and pedestrians coming from either side. I'd probably have trouble steering backward through a camera anyway.

Actually it'd be cool if you could see the display while you were twisted around looking backward.

Back over 'accidents' don't happen because you can't see what is behind you. They happen because you are oblivious to your surroundings. People can't handle their own guilt so they try to pawn it off on society. Well guess what, 99+ percent of all vehicles never back over a child. It has nothing to do with the "visibility systems."

Why should we believe you over the NHTSA on this question?

Because his statement was not loaded with emotion like the one from the NHTSA.

>""We are committed to protecting the most vulnerable victims of back-over accidents — our children and seniors," Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement."

This rule doesn't pass the "sniff" test. There is absolutely nothing backing this except an estimate that several dozen lives might be saved. No cost effectiveness analysis, no comparison to other changes.

Actually, his statement was just as loaded with emotion. It was just a different emotion. Instead of "think of the children", it was the typical nerd emotional appeal of "the problem is that people are idiots and if they would just stop being idiots then we wouldn't have to deal with people being idiots."

Regarding your "absolutely nothing backing this" statement, did you read through their documentation before saying this, or did you just assume? It's pretty extensive.

http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/FMVSS-111_Re...

I was talking about their statements, not information buried in a report the public won't read. You think people would approve of this rule if the NHTSA had of worked, "Based on the aforementioned revised estimates for costs and benefits, the net cost per equivalent life saved for rear visibility systems meeting the requirements of today’s final rule ranges from $15.9 to $26.3 million.", into their public statement?

If you actually read the report it is clear this has nothing to do with rear-vision camera systems being cost effective and is just about the NHTSA doing what they are told by congress.

>"Throughout this rulemaking process, the agency has been sensitive to the costs of today’s rule and has sought to ensure that the requirements adopted impose the least amount of regulatory burden on the economy while still achieving Congress’ goal of reducing fatalities and injuries resulting from backover crashes."

And hyperion2010 was right, having a rear-vision system doesn't mean you will use it (where I live it is illegal to use them when actually reversing). The solution to these accidents is education.

Technology is often the answer to human stupidity, but not at $15.9 to $26.3 million per life saved.

Sorry, the telepathy lobe of my brain was damaged when I was young, so when I read "There is absolutely nothing backing this" I took that as meaning what it said.

Even if you took it that way there is still nothing backing this. Finding the best way to implement a dumb policy does not mean the overall policy is backed by a good argument.

Even if this was the most cost-effective life saving measure the NHTSA could implement, it still doesn't mean it is the most cost-effective life saving measure that government could take.

The argument was that these accidents don't happen because of an inability to see, but due to being "oblivious". Cost effectiveness doesn't enter into it. The question at hand is simply whether back up cameras save lives. NHTSA says they do. hyperion2010 says they don't.

I asked hyperion2010 why I should believe him over the NHTSA. You then replied with two completely nonsensical arguments:

1. That the NHTSA was wrong because their statement was loaded with emotion. This is silly, because emotion doesn't make a statement wrong any more than it makes a statement right. So let's move on to the meat:

2. That the NHTSA has no evidence for their claim.

And this is just plain wrong. The link I provided shows a reasonably thorough study which illustrates that having a camera does substantially reduce these types of accidents. It is not perfect, because some people really are oblivious. But neither is it useless, because some accidents are not due to simple obliviousness.

Your response to this was that it somehow doesn't count if it's not spelled out in their press release, which is just plain stupid.

If you want to discuss the cost/benefit tradeoff of this decision and whether the money would be better spent elsewhere, go for it. But that was not what we were discussing in this thread, so don't act like statements about cost effectiveness are somehow relevant.

Please don't be a jerk on HN.

Sorry, but I don't put up with the double standard where you're allowed to be a jerk as long as you're just completely derailing the conversation and acting like an idiot, but not if you come out and use sarcasm.

It astonishes me that somebody can come out and say that the reasoning behind a rule is wrong, and then immediately turn around and say that they weren't actually talking about the reasoning, but the PR. And then he doesn't get called out on that at all, but I get called out for calling him out because I wasn't nice enough. Well, screw that.

He may have been wrong, but unless I missed something, he wasn't personally abusive. If we can't keep a clear distinction between those two things, civil discussion is impossible.

Neither was I.

Actually, you're right about that. I got my forms of abuse mixed up; there are so many. Sorry for accusing you of the wrong thing.

If you really don't see anything wrong with posting that kind of aggressive sarcasm on Hacker News, then I don't think you believe in the guidelines here. They call for personal civility. Please follow them.

I'm civil as long as the people talking to me are civil. Once that stops, I don't bother holding up my end of the bargain.

I've driven several cars with a backup camera and never used it, instead I used my eyes. Maybe I'm just not used to them since my main vehicle doesn't have one, but I feel like the one time I need it to work it will have some sort of lag/delay or a blind spot and cause me an accident if I trust it.

I guess the assumption is that people will be more aware if they can see what's behind them on TV. But is this true? Has this been studied? Or do people back up more safely when rely on their vision and who aren't glued to the TV?

Good idea. While they're at it get rid of those passenger side convex mirrors, "objects are closer than they appear." One of the functions of a rear view mirror is to tell you where objects are behind you when you are changing lanes in heavy traffic. You can cover your blind spot by proper adjustment of your side mirror.

Don't forget that in some areas of the country, we get snow pretty regularly - in my experience back-up camera lenses get completely covered by road grit in snowy zones pretty quickly - makes it hard to rely on for something critical like highway visibility for a few months a year.

It is not an issue at all. It happened 3 times with me during the whole winter, and I quickly wiped and cleaned the lens. The windows and mirrors get dirty too, we often clean them.

When you say "it happened three times" this whole winter do you mean "it snowed three times"? I live in Syracuse, NY. We get 100+ inches every year, so I have some experience with the slushy salt+sand mixture that covers everything near a road in the winter. You can clean your car all you want but as soon as you spend 2 minutes driving a lot of the salt+sand+slush is back. How do you clean the lens while driving?

Seriously. My entire rear window is unusable after five minutes on the road this winter, no idea how any rear-facing camera could function.

I live in NY as well, and it snowed every week most of the winter. My camera lens got dirty or blocked by ice on only three occasions. Mostly, the camera is clear even when windows are dirty.

Is cleaning camera lens for a total of 3 times in a year a big deal? We clean our cars a lot more than that.

You are correct 3 times in one winter is not a lot. I am saying that 3 times in one winter is not an accurate estimate of how often I would have to clean the camera. How much snow did you receive in your area of NY? Did you get half the snow Syracuse did?

  City       2013-14     Avg.
  ----------------------------
  Syracuse    131.6      123.8
  Buffalo     128.7       94.7
  Rochester   112.3       99.5
  Binghamton   84.4       83.4
  Albany       71.1       59.1

from: http://goldensnowball.com/

I prefer blind spot mirrors or segmented mirrors. I can't work out why they're not popular in North America, but the last two British cars I owned had them as standard. Two mirrors = no blind spots.

The biggest reason why I don't like angling the mirrors outwards is because it reduces visibility close to the rear on both sides - just large enough for a cyclist to sneak while waiting at a junction.

I actually get really nervous driving a car without a backup camera now. This is good news.

Your average passenger car has darn near 360 degrees of visibility, with very good mirror coverage.

I can see how a camera would be useful (though I find them difficult to use, as I'm never sure if the image is reversed or not), but it should never be necessary (at least until the point where the driver is no longer necessary).

360 degrees around what axis?

Backup cameras allow you to see low objects directly behind you, which no mirror system does on any passenger car I've ever seen.

Sadly, it won't help in the most tragic cases where a toddler is already under the car. (We had friends who had to suffer through such an incident some years back.)

Cynical side of me says "hey look! More cameras for TLAs to use!"

Also, unsure about cost/benefit here.

Sounds like a huge cost for little gain. Why doesn't the NHTSA require daytime running lights?

link to the final rule:

http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/FMVSS-111_Re...

Can anyone comment on value of patent and potential licensing revenues.

I found one patent holder [1] but I assume they are several others that can claim and request licensing fees.

[1] http://www.google.com/patents/US20060103727

If auto makers didn't design huge vehicles from which the drivers can't see the ground behind them for hundreds of feet, this wouldn't be much of an issue.

Kind of difficult to design a truck that does not have this problem. The Ford F-series truck is the #1 selling automobile in the US (Chevy Silverado and Dodge Ram, also trucks, are #2 and #3).

Or a trunk, for that matter.

It's not at 100 feet behind you that the trouble lies; mirrors are sufficient for that. It's the 1-5 feet behind you that you're completely blind to with mirrors (assuming you don't have transparent rear seats and hatch).

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