I always use BGE. My dad basically nagged me into remembering it always. I tell people who have never done it, go find a parking lot with just a few cars in it and convince themselves that it works and that it is safer than twisting their head around to see backwards.
A warning, do NOT use this mirror arrangement if you drive in a crowded city and share the road with scooters, motorcycles, bikes, and pedestrians.
BGE is great if you drive on big roads and mainly share it with other cars.
However if you drive in a city with tons of scooters, you know the ones that will swarm your car, then they will all be in your blind spot if you use this mirror arrangement.
My Ford car has smaller convex mirrors in the corners of the normal side mirrors and they are a godsend in busy city driving. I really miss them when driving other cars.
I'm surprised to see this is the first mention of convex mirrors. I get some of the stick-on variety for any car I'm driving, as it dramatically increases the viewing angle for my side mirrors. I get them for my friends to put on their mirrors, too. If a $6 item can help avoid any kind of collision, that's an insane ROI.
I completely agree. Although, alternatively, you can keep BGE and just move your head a lot more when in the crowded city environment, if that isn't your primary driving environment. It isn't nearly as big of a problem to look sideways in the low urban speed environments, IMO.
Turning your head backwards gives you wider peripheral vision with the properties described in the article (i.e. quick motion detection).
When reversing in perpendicular pedestrian/cycle traffic (such as coming out a driveway, or if you accidentally ended up over a pedestrian crossing when the red light got you and you want to go back a few feet) looking backwards is much safer.
Requirement for a past job was that I take a traffic safety course, and one of the things they taught us was to never back up when you were caught out in the crosswalk because pedestrians will frequently walk behind the car. Better to sit where you are and feel stupid.
