No more blind spots?

by Bob Gillespie

This certainly is an amazing innovation described in the article below, but considering the cost, I think I'll just continue to take that brief glance over my shoulder to check the blind spot area. Some people say they have eliminated the blind spot by the way they set their mirrors.

I can't argue with them, it could be possible, although I'm not able to do it on my car. Why, you say? It's because I don't have those large, up to date convex mirrors on the sides of the car. Even then, there could still be a blind spot area. It's something a person would have to check out.

Here's a good way to check the right blind spot, if there is one. Find a quiet street with a solid row of parked cars and pull alongside of them, as if they were in the other lane of traffic. Now, check the rear view and side view mirrors. You should be able to see all the cars. If you can see all the vehicles except, let's say, half of a car, that's not good enough - what about motorcycles? Repeat the process for the other side of the car.

The above are some of the things I talk about in my defensive driver course, covering every aspect of safe, defensive driving.

New systems monitor blind spot

Digital cameras, radar sensors used in systems

Allan Lamb and Bob McHugh, Special to The province

This column takes an occasional look at new vehicle-safety technology -- how it works and interacts with users.
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Audi calls it Side Assist and Volvo calls it BLIS. Both companies recently introduced us to a new active safety technology that warns a driver about vehicles approaching from what's commonly referred to as the "blind spot" off the rear quarter of a vehicle.

It's unlikely that this technology will end the "he came out of nowhere" explanation for a collision, but it could be beneficial to many drivers.

Currently it's only available on the Audi Q7 and the Volvo S80 in Canada, so it's still early days to judge "real world" effectiveness.

Audi charges $650 for the Side Assist option, but if it catches on as a popular industry-wide option, the price should come down dramatically. And these days that doesn't take too long, especially for optional electronic add-on features.

Although they perform a comparable task and function in a similar way from a driver perspective, the Audi and Volvo blind-spot check systems use quite different technologies.
Rear-bumper mounted radar sensors are used to monitor approaching vehicles (from an adjacent lane) in the Audi Side Assist system. A coloured light strip on the side-mirror housing illuminates when a speeding vehicle is detected within range and a secondary warning alarm sounds if the driver also activates the turn signal on that side.

The bumper sensors send information to a computer that can even identify a motorcycle approach within 50 metres of the rear of the vehicle. It's not active at speeds under 35 km/h and the driver can also choose to turn it off.

An interesting Audi design criteria was that the warning system must not make the driver look bad in the eyes of his or her passengers. The LED light strips on the outside mirrors are positioned so they are only visible from the driver's seat.

Volvo's Blind Spot Information System uses tiny digital cameras built-into the side door mirror assemblies. They take 25 pictures per second that are then fed to and analyzed by a computer.
The system can recognize a motorcycle as well as a car or a truck and even works at night.
There are, however, weather conditions (such as dense fog or blowing snow) in which BLIS may not function.

In such a case, it automatically notifies the driver. BLIS is active from a vehicle speed of 10 km/h and reacts to other vehicles approaching quickly from behind or in an adjacent lane.
Now you could argue that there's no such thing as a blind spot, if the driver has adjusted the side mirrors correctly in the first place.

Then again, you could also argue that the main benefit of a blind spot checking system is that it quickly alerts the driver to a potentially dangerous situation. Driver inattention to the task of driving is the initial cause of a high percentage of vehicle accidents.

In addition to drowsiness or eating on the go, today's driver can be distracted by a multitude of in-car electronic devices, such as a cellphone, an advanced audio system or a navigational system.

In a study released by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in April 2006, distractions (including drowsiness) were estimated to be a contributing factor in eight out of every 10 police-reported traffic crashes.

That's about four million vehicle crashes per year -- far from bliss.

Allan Lamb is the executive director of the BCAA Traffic Safety Foundation and Bob McHugh is a freelance automotive journalist.