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Mirror solution.


JohnK

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Too bad for her: US NHTSA Safety Standard 111 requires a flat 1:1 magnification mirror on the driver's side.

 

I rented a Volvo in Greece that had a dual-contour mirror: it was flat on the inside and convex towards the outer third. It worked really well.

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My 2003 Ford F350 has two mirrors (standard on top, Convex on the bottom) on the drivers side and passenger side in one rear view mirror housing that lets the driver see what both the standard mirror shows and the convex mirror also shows as in her example photo. Just dose not seem that new except for maybe hers is clearer (lack of distortion) but without seeing one it is just another mirror. I would suspect that the mirror would be better used for the inside rear view to give people a better awareness of what is behind and to the sides of the vehicle but that is just my belief.

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Too bad for her: US NHTSA Safety Standard 111 requires a flat 1:1 magnification mirror on the driver's side.
And other countries (GB is one, if I recall correctly) mandate a convex mirror on both sides. One style must be right and one must be wrong, but flat/convex are either mandated/prohibited or prohibited/mandated depending on where you drive.
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How can they give a Patent for a curved Mirror?? If you are near a car with one of these stay well clear as they will only see you as a speck in the distance.

 

That's where the math comes in - it's not as simple as a regular curve of some sort, it's a mathematically generated surface that has unique and useful properties that you can't get from what's available today.

 

"Hicks's driver's side mirror has a field of view of about 45 degrees.... 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.

 

Hicks, a professor in Drexel's College of Arts and Sciences, designed his mirror using a mathematical algorithm that precisely controls the angle of light bouncing off of the curving mirror. . . . "

 

Read on for an understandable explanation.

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Hardly a novel idea, and how is this guy getting a patent on this mirror. My 2010 Ford F150 with trailer package has the telescoping mirrors and each side has two different mirrors. The upper one is a standard somewhat flat but not completely flat. The lower one is a convex mirror that shows anything to the side of my truck, like possibly a small little itty bitty car like a Caterham 7!!! All of my bigger trucks have dual mirrors as well, been around for as many years as I have. What is patentable about this ?

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