I track Prius accidents and a near-miss along with a fatal accident got me thinking about the most common blind spot, the A pillars that are on the right and left sides of the windshields:
- 07/29/2011 Palo Alto - knock down, left turning Prius, driver reports he did not see them except just in time to do an emergency stop.
- 05/03/2010 Seattle WA - fatality, left turning Prius
North American drivers sit more behind the left side pillar than the right side pillar. Also, our left turns have a larger radius than our right turns so more of the area our cars will soon be in are obscured by the left pillar. The Palo Alto accident in particular got me to see the Gestalt problem of the A pillar.
I have been mentally working on a Prius front view camera system and considered several mounting locations:
- fog light mounts - are as much to the front as possible but in a bad place for road debris. However, excellent wide angle coverage.
- back of review mirror - exposed to sunlight there would be thermal problems. It would need automatic 'registration' and have to deal with more vibration and wires and stress on the windshield glued mirrors.
- top corner visor - not covered by the windshield wipers, unusable in rain, but good thermal and mechanical mount. Registration is a simpler problem.
- cross-eyed top corner visors - excellent overlap and the left camera could see to far right and right camera to far left. Their overlap in the front would provide excellent distance metrics. Sable mount and shield from sun except when driving into low sun.
Of the different approaches, I like cross-eyed because of the extreme wide view and windshield wiper, clear views to approaching side traffic. Computationally it may be be more complex but that is why we have computers and software.
As for the driver interface, between the A pillar and a heads-up display, there are options.
Bob Willson
- ZVW30
