Back up cameras

Um, you're driving forward, but you want to focus on the rear long enough to try reading a license plate while you're bumping on the road? When you look in the rear view mirror, that is a short interrupt during driving, plus your peripheral vision helps you to see large stuff or changes happening in front of you. Focusing on the head unit takes your eyes off the road ahead. The rearward camera is meant to be used when you are in reverse which means you are likely moving slowly, not driving backwards at 50 MPH.

If you're determined to defeat the safety measure (keeping your eyes focused on the road), there are workarounds, and they don't require any wiring or changes to wiring, like:

The first hit I had was:

The option obviously depends on the feature set you have in your car's head unit. If the option isn't available to you, there are Bluetooth and WiFi backup cameras that you could wirelessly connect to a smartphone or separate display. Some don't require much for mounting the backup camera (since there is no wiring). One acts as a license plate frame. They're wireless, so no wiring to route or change.

(me) AT LIGHTS and such' meaning traffic lights ie. when stopped.

It was just a question, for someone who has done it.

Thanks for your help.

Did you check the settings for your head unit to see if there's one to keep the backup camera active?

How are the Amazon searches not germaine to seeing license plates behind you? I thought the wifi license plate backup camera was on target.

The problem with a live camera is nothing is recorded. You have to be looking at the rearward camera at the time you want to see the license plate of the car behind you. If they ram you, you'll be recovering from the collision, so by the time you look at the rearward camera that car may have left, or your camera is smashed. Not sure why you car about the license plate number of the guy behind you unless they hit you, but then your backup camera might've been damage or destroyed, so you have nothing to view backward. For an accident, participants and witness often forget or neglect the details; i.e., you get 20 different stories from 20 witnesses.

If I were to go to all the trouble of having cameras around the car for monitoring what is happening around and to me, and without all the lines in the video showing safe positioning of the car when backing up, I'd get dash cams (which could be front, sides, and rear) designed to record, and perhaps even upload to cloud storage. Instead of buying dedicated dashcams, you can even use apps to repurpose old smartphones sitting in drawers collecting dust.

and more by searching on "dash cam" at play.google.com

Some have free versions, but the extra features in paid pro version may be worth the small price. I'd start with the free version to test several dash cam apps before I'd decide on which one to buy. You can find reviews online.

If you are only interested in seeing the license plate of the car behind you while stopped at traffic lights, why can't you put your foot on the brake pedal (you're already pressing on it at the traffic light), and put the car in reverse to activate the backup camera display? Yeah, your backup lights will come on, but if you're peering at their license plate then there would be a reason to do so, and maybe you want to get their attention, too.

On 3/18/2022 3:03 PM, VanguardLH wrote: snip...

All of this assuming that the state involved even has front plates -- not all do. I got a free Garmin "Dash Cam Mini 2" from Amazon when the package from my original order for same vanished into the ether; after four or five days they shipped me a replacement; when that showed up so did the original "vanished" package but when I contacted them they said to just keep both. See, they aren't always the evil empire. <g>

I gave some thought to doing a rear view with the second one. This model is minuscule and has no display but saves automatically in a collision and saves videos and snaps pictures with a voice command but any live view is only on a linked smart phone but I wouldn't be looking at it in real time anyway. Conveniently their phone app supports multiple cameras simultaneously. Might be worth an experiment. Or I might just sell the thing and buy beer with the proceeds...