Quote:
Originally Posted by dsgerbc
Not harmless either. Adjusting eyesight to a different mirror takes precious time away from the driver.
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Harmless enough to make it past Ford's safety bean counters as a standard feature on Mustangs.
The time it takes to focus when turning your head alone without aid of a convex mirror is significantly more. After owning a few sport coupes with horrible blind spots, I've adapted ways to heighten awareness of my periphery. The convex mirror is but one tool and, yes, it takes some getting used to, but once you get it you'll never go back (only for cars with bad blind spots; I don't use convex mirrors on my SX4). You'd still want to turn your head with it (gotta watch for those riders), but the time and refocusing effort you need to take for that head turn becomes drastically reduced.
Without convex mirror: Turn your head and
lose sight of road in front (completely out of periphery) for the entire time it takes you to survey your blind spot, then turn back to re-focus on road in front. Worst of all, your check was
still blocked the by C-pillar so you never know what's behind it.
With convex mirror: Check side view and convex mirror so road in front remains in periphery, do a quick glance to your side for any glaring objects (
no need to take time to survey) as a fail safe. Since it was just a spot check to the side, the road in front remains fresher in your memory. It completely reveals what's hidden behind your C-pillar. Best part: Whenever there is something in your blind spot, 99% of the time you will catch it in your convex mirror first and you never had to turn your head and lose time surveying the blind spot then re-focusing on the front --> Analogy: Convex mirror is to GPS navigation as head turn is to directions printed out on paper from Mapquest. You absolutely won't be turning your head losing and struggling to regain focus as much!
Using convex mirrors in conjunction with a quick side glance is worlds safer than using either exclusively; saved my ass several times.