waremark wrote:PeterE wrote:trashbat wrote:I confess that I sometimes (often?) do this.
It's not what I was taught to do, but view through the rear of my car is poor, and I feel I can maintain better situational awareness by scanning mirrors. As ever, I try and fit my behaviour to the context, so I wouldn't do it in a busy supermarket car park for instance.
I now have a car with a reversing camera
So do I. It increases the number of places to look! I am pleasantly surprised by the clear and complete view even in the dark, but unpleasantly surprised by the extent and speed to which it gets wet and dirty, with an adverse effect on vision.
You mean it doesn't have high pressure water jets to clean it?
Goodness me, Mark, you'll have to stop buying these cheap cars.
BTW, does anybody else feel that the illumination given by the reversing lights on some cars is now less good than it used to be on cars of, er, umpteen years ago? For reversing purposes, are they supposed to be for the driver's benefit, or are they now provided largely as an indication to others that the vehicle is about to do some reversing?
....and another thing: early versions of the Pug 406 used to have rear light assemblies with red lenses for the tail lights and brake lights, amber lenses for the direction indicators, and colourless lenses for the reversing lights. That seemed to me a sensible arrangement and it was how things used to be done, on most cars anyhow, but on our 406 (a June 2000 model) all the rear lenses are red, and the direction indicators have bulbs with an amber coating on them (which eventually wears off!). This means that although the tail lights, brake lights and direction indicators all show correct colours, I suspect that the effectiveness of the reversing lights is diminished by the light having to pass through red lenses. Certainly they don't seem very bright; maybe like me.
....and (yet) another thing (you'll get tired of this shortly
): in order to give decent coverage for reversing purposes at night, cars should have twin reversing lights, one at each rear corner. I don't like this cheapo system of having a single reversing light at the left rear, and a single fog lamp at the right rear, which is what we seem to have on many cars at the lower end of the price range.
Best wishes all,
Dave.