Just musing the other day on why some advances disappear or are ignored.
First the blind spot: As everyone knows the blind spot is actually the "beside your car" spot. The motorist, whose field of vision is about
45 degrees right and left from the straight-ahead, when pulling out to pass or exit, is forced to ignore what's happening in front of him and turn his head to the left or right as appropriate to verify the absence of a vehicle in the next lane. Everyone has had the experience of someone not doing a sufficiently good job and beginning to pull out into your vehicle or they themselves, after ignoring what's in front for a few vital seconds, pulling into the path of an adjacent vehicle or even worse perhaps while looking to the right or left not noticing the sudden stop of the car in front of them.But they solved this problem at least 70 years ago: fender mirrors. Two mirrors mounted on the fenders well within your arc of sight, which at a glance will tell you what's beside your vehicle. Many busses (especially school busses) and trucks still have them although in a rather spartan form. Why don't cars?
The second is the beep-beep emitted by trucks and vans when reversing. Why don't cars have these? If I had my druthers I also like to see a super-bright flashing light to the rear, like the lights you see on some of the unmarked highway police cruisers. I ran over some woman's foot one fine morning about five year ago while backing into a parking space, a accident which could have been avoided with the beep-beep.
Personally I can smell conspiracy here, that or the "Think of the children" crowd (their rug rats might be hit by a mirror) or the NIMBY people (backing cars might disturb their sleep). Anyone have any insight?