There is a strong temptation in the automotive world for engineers and designers to ‘perfect’ technologies that have already reached their evolutionary apex. Facing the twin pressures of differentiating their vehicles from the sea of same-same while also proving to everyone that they, too, can hi-tech with the best of them, the wheel is continually re-invented – only most of the time, it’s a little oblong by the time it makes it to the market.
Visibility Reduction InitiatedIntermittent windshield wipers have been around for 50 years. This ingenious, and bone-simple technology allows drivers to manually set the rate at which they want to wipe the glass in front of them, typically by way of a rotating dial on the wiper stalk itself. It works well, requires no elaborate computer controls, and is usually fine-tunable to the perfect rain or snow-sweeping rhythm.
It’s a frustrating situation made even more so by the fact that no one I’ve talked to can recall asking for this kind of automatic feature in the first place. It’s a ‘solution’ to a non-existent problem – or rather, one that was solved decades ago by a much simpler intermittent wiper design. A camera is absolutely none of those things. For one thing, what you see in the screen that’s replacing the mirror isn’t nearly as high-definition as the reality of life itself being instantaneously reflected into your eyes by a traditional mirror, with refresh rates and resolutions often making it difficult to move one’s attention back and forth between the road ahead and the movie playing behind.
drivingdotca The smarter the car, the dumber the driver.
drivingdotca What a horribly short sighted piece. Drive a car with auto wipers or rear camera for any length of time and you’ll never go back.
drivingdotca now this i totally agree with!