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Comment by russell | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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