From The Far Side to Jurassic Park to Reality
Driving without a Blind Spot May Be Closer Than It Appears
It’s not hard to make a curved mirror that gives a wider field of view – no blind spot – but at the cost of visual distortion and making objects appear smaller and farther away.
Hicks’s driver’s side mirror has a field of view of about 45 degrees, compared to 15 to 17 degrees of view in a flat driver’s side mirror. Unlike in simple curved mirrors that can squash the perceived shape of objects and make straight lines appear curved, in Hicks’s mirror the visual distortions of shapes and straight lines are barely detectable.
(Yeah, I know that the “objects are closer than they appear” gags were on the passenger side, which does have a curved mirror)
SFN RSS
I thought the Car Talk guys came up with a good way to avoid this problem:
http://www.cartalk.com/content/avoiding-blind-spot-6