Just in case.

I once owned a 1962 Buick Skylark, a cute little 2-door that was about the same size as a ’65 Mustang.  The previous owner was the original owner, who had bought it new when he was already middle-aged, and sold it more or less when he died.  You could tell it had been an Old Man’s Car.  It had curb-feelers on all four corners (not just the passenger side, which would have been normal), and the guy had added several aftermarket mirrors.  There was the original rearview mounted near the center-top of the windshield.  The original driver’s sideview mounted just outside (and partially blocked by) the wing window.  A dealer-installed passenger-side mirror that mostly matched the driver’s side one.  And two Pep Boys aftermarket sideview mirrors mounted on the front fenders about twelve inches in front of the other sideview mirrors.

Guy always knew just where he’d been.  For what it’s worth, for a 30-year-old car (at the time I bought it), it had a perfectly straight body and had never been wrecked.  So there’s that.

Getting a highbeam from my side mirror is horrible :(

I’m mostly basing this on myself — since I started using this configuration, I’ve become hyper-aware of my blind spots. Every time I check my mirrors, this awareness gets reinforced, because I think “Wait, where’s the side of my car? Oh right, blind spots.”

Also, checking over my shoulder is a conditioned response for me. It’s as automatic for me as knowing which side is the brake. It would be harder for me not to check over my shoulder. 

I didn’t have a particularly hardcore driver’s ed curriculum or anything, just regular public school driver’s ed and driving with my parents, and my parents aren’t professional drivers or anything, just regular people. So I wonder where people learn to drive that they don’t have this programmed into them.

Recently the cops were directing traffic at a large intersection at night. They wanted to block left turns from the side of the intersection opposite to me, so they had a police car parked in the left turn lane on that side with its lights going. This meant its ultra-bright, strobing headlights were aimed directly at my eyes for several minutes while I waited for my turn.

Then they got mad when I couldn’t see them waving their dim orange light-up batons to tell me to proceed.

Incidentally, whenever someone in front of me is driving incompetently, I look at their side mirror. 95% of the time I can see their head perfectly centered.

I took off the stick-on convex mirror I had on the driver’s side, because it made my mirror visibility worse. It was big enough to see things in, but no matter where I put it on the mirror it was blocking a spot I wanted to be able to see.

What’s ideal is a combination of the two types of mirrors, like trucks and buses and so on have – not overlapping each other. When I’ve driven vehicles with such a setup, I was very happy (and of course I don’t know how you could possibly drive such vehicles without good mirrors!) This is more difficult with small cars, of course. I think the new slightly-convex side mirrors some cars have are the solution, but it’ll take time for cheap cars to get those too.

And while we’re on the subject, I think that, for most drivers, turning one’s head back over one’s shoulder while shooting down a car-packed highway is iffy at best, dangerous at worst.  A good convex mirror (i.e., not one of those weak-tea convex mirrors that sometimes come as original equipment) is the best way to go.

Here in Toronto all the rage is covering up your semi-useful if improperly aligned mirror with a stupid convex mirror so you have no grasp of the distance of anything.  I’ve been cut off by more of these geniuses than even the people who like to watch the sides of their car on the highway.  New Fords also seem to have a similar if less obtrusive top outer corner portion of the mirror done this way – my current rental Focus has it and its useless.  Covers up an important part of the mirror to give you a tiny duplicate of the same thing.  Hope its a delete option.

When I taught my friend about this after he passed his test he was shocked at how much you can miss when you just rely on the mirrors.

On your motorcycle we refer to these as “lifesavers”, and you WILL fail your test if you don’t do them. (Plus motorcycle mirrors tend to be fairly useless at speed)