Transport Canada made rear view cameras mandatory in cars starting in May 2018. At the time, I thought it was an unnecessary law, and even after having a car with a camera, I still don鈥檛 think it made very much sense to make it a legal requirement. I understand the appeal as an extra cost option, but if someone interested in cheap, basic transportation skipped it they wouldn鈥檛 be risking anyone鈥檚 life. On a nice day it can be useful, especially when parallel parking, but if I lost it tomorrow I would not be backing over every child in town.
Also, it should be telling that I added the qualifier 鈥渙n a nice day.鈥� As it turns out, the rear camera actually isn鈥檛 as useful as you might expect if there鈥檚 any mud or snow anywhere near your vehicle. Which, as it turns out, happens a lot in Canada. So I can confirm that I will not be backing over every child in the lot because it is winter, and unless I make a conscious effort to clean the camera every time I park the car, instead of a panoramic view of the lot I have an excellent picture of a bunch of mud.
Turns out the dirt factor was something that nobody took into account when pushing cameras as the next big thing in safety.
The old fashioned mirror, long the standard way that people saw behind them, could get dirty, of course, but the difference is all in surface area. A small blob of mud on a mirror only takes up a very small amount of the total surface area, you can see past it so it doesn鈥檛 affect your overall visibility to a significant degree. It takes a lot to get your mirror so dirty you can鈥檛 actually see anymore.
Even a small blob of mud on a camera, however, could take up half of the available surface area, which effectively means you can鈥檛 see anything at all. This isn鈥檛 a huge problem at the moment, as these cameras function as a supplemental safety feature, we still have mirrors for the most part. The problem comes when manufacturers decide to go all camera, all the time.
This is something they want to do. In Japan, Lexus sells a model that has replaced side mirrors with cameras, Cadillac is replacing the interior rear view mirror with a camera. In ideal conditions, this could lead to a less obstructed view, but that鈥檚 the funny thing about ideal conditions, they don鈥檛 always exist.
Right now, the existence of mud on a lens merely means that I don鈥檛 have a camera when I back up, and I can live with that. I just use the mirrors and rear window like people have been doing for decades, and it鈥檚 fine. But if you suddenly don鈥檛 have mirrors when you鈥檙e driving down the street, you have a serious problem.
I don鈥檛 think cameras are a bad thing, of course, and they should be required on vehicles with no rear window, because rear visibility is important and the only alternative there is nothing at all. But I am well aware that they鈥檙e not the be all and end all of pedestrian safety that many seem to think they are. These cameras are not compatible with mud, dirt and snow, and this is a problem in Canada. Having them as a supplemental safety system is useful, but I would not buy a vehicle which replaced mirrors with them entirely, because I still want to see out of my car after driving on a dirt road.
