In March, 2014, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) passed a rule that will eventually require all new vehicles to be equipped with backup cameras. The cameras are meant to prevent back-over accidents. Small children and the elderly are at highest risk for being accidentally run over in a backup accident. According to the NHTSA, an average of 210 people are killed and 15,000 are injured in back-over accidents each year.
The New Rule
The rule is to be phased in over the next few years, and all new vehicles that are under 10,000 and manufactured on or after May 1, 2018, will have to have the rear cameras. That includes truck and buses. The camera must provide 10 foot x 20 foot field of view directly behind the vehicle.
Effectiveness of Backup Cameras
Backup cameras do prevent accidents, and save lives, but they are not 100% effective. The NHTSA expects cameras to save somewhere between 58 and 69 lives each year.
A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) found that driver behavior and lighting conditions can both affect the effectiveness of the cameras.
In cars installed with both cameras and sensors, drivers were slightly more likely to have a backup collision than in vehicles with the cameras alone, presumably because drivers were prone to trust the sensors rather than double-checking the camera display. In situations where the drivers actually used the cameras properly, meaning they looked at the display to make sure they weren’t going to run something or someone over, poor lighting still obscured the obstacle from view for some drivers, causing a collision.
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