When it comes to adjusting a car's mirrors, people seem to fall in to two camps. Camp one says that you should adjust your mirror so that no part of the car is showing, so that you get as complete as possible a view of your blind spots. Camp two says that you should have a portion of your car in the mirror, to show you where you are in relation to what's around you. Which camp I believe to be right is the subject of today's article.
Take a look at the picture below, taken from Car and Driver's website (http://www.caranddriver.com/features/how-to-adjust-your-mirrors-to-avoid-blind-spots):
In this image, Car and Driver is attempting to make the case of the Society of Automotive Engineers, (or SAE, these are the people who grade engine oil, among a number of other very worthy things), who published a paper in 1995 describing a strategy using mirrors to eliminate blind spots. What they proposed was to adjust both side mirrors outward until what they showed just overlapped what the center mounted rear-view mirror showed. While I am in no ways going to display the temerity to call such a great organization as the SAE wrong, I will say that in my experience, it is better to have a small part of the car visible in the rearview mirror, and here is why I say that.
I want you to take a look at the following picture.
This is obviously a picture of a child, but what else can you really know about it? You can see what look like floaties on the child's arm, but is this child really around water here? Is the child in the air, or is the child sitting down in front of a background? These questions might sound silly, but with only a small part of the picture showing, as here, there is no way to really know what's going on. It's only when one looks at the whole picture that one can see what is really going on:
Now that the whole picture is clear, you can clearly see that this picture is of a child, at the beach, who was thrown in to the air by his or her father. It's the same with the mirrors on a car. In my opinion, if you adjust your mirrors outward so far that you don't have any of the car in the mirror, the situation is like that in the first photograph. Yes, you know that there is a child there, but you don't know where the child is, how far away, if they are something you need to worry about, or anything else. All you know is that there is a child. If mirrors are adjusted out to only show the blind spot, the driver has no frame of reference for how close the car in the mirror is. Having a small part of the car visible in the mirror allows the driver to not only see the car, but the driver can see how close or far the car is, and see if any adjustments need to be made as a result of that car. These are things that having a mirror only focused on blind spots just don't let you do.
Another hazard with only having mirrors focused on blind spots is the possibility of a driver getting overconfident and no longer checking blind spots by turning their head. While I think having a driver not need to turn his or her head to check blind spots is the whole reason that the SAE encourages people to adjust mirrors to only focus on blind spots, I think that drivers losing this skill will possibly be a bit more careless about looking around them, and this is what I fear can lead to more accidents, not how the mirror is adjusted.
Ok, so now that that subject has been discussed, let's talk about how I think mirrors should be adjusted.. First off, is the rear view mirror. This mirror should be adjusted so that it is looking straight back through the rear window. You should not be able to see yourself when you look up to gaze in to the rear view mirror, and the mirror should not show the ceiling of the car or the deck lid (this is the flat area between the rear seats and the rear window). The side mirrors should be adjusted so that when the driver looks in to them, a small sliver of the car is visible. If a driver has the side mirror adjusted so that the car door is taking up 1/3 of the mirror, the mirror is not adjusted properly. I suggest that no more than maybe 1/8 of the mirror's surface should show the car door when the driver looks in to it. If you take a look at the first image in this article, you'll see that the way Car and Driver adjusted the mirror had too much door in it. I'd half about half of that much of the car door in the mirror.
This kind of adjustment is the best of both worlds in my opinion. The mirror captures a good portion of the blind spot, and yet there is still a part of the car visible, so that the driver has a frame of reference for the images he or she is seeing. This isn't important while driving on roads, but if the driver has to back into a parking space, or is trying to see how much space is between him and another car, or the driver is trying to see how straight they parked, this way of adjusting mirrors allows the driver to do just that.
Now how to use your mirrors. You should be looking in your mirrors every ten to fifteen seconds when you are driving. My normal routine is to check the center rear-view mirror first, then go to the left mirror, and then go to the right one. When a driver does this, he or she isn't studying the image in the mirror, they are more scanning the mirror, looking for such things as erratic driving behind them, following distance between them and cars coming up behind and just basic awareness of the driving situation behind them. This allows a driver to be able to be proactive in dealing with driving situations that might come up.
So to wrap up, my experience has shown me that having a small part of the car door visible in the mirror allows a driver to have a frame of reference for what they are seeing, while also allowing the driver to back up and check clearances more accurately because they can see where the car is in relation to white lines or other cars. Once mirrors are adjusted like that, they should be checked every ten to fifteen seconds, with the driver looking at the center rear-view mirror first, and then the left mirror, and finally the right. Drivers should scan the images in the mirror, not study them. In all honesty, it doesn't matter what pattern a driver uses to look at mirrors, as long as all the mirrors are checked often, and they are adjusted in such a way as to give the driver the best possible view of what's behind him or her. Until next time...
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