Advantages of Backup Cameras
Clearly, the most obvious benefit of a rear-facing camera is that it helps avert injury-causing and potentially fatal back over accidents by expanding your field of vision, particularly below the rear window or trunk level. Cameras also increase your ability to see beyond the width of a mirror's image, helping to eliminate blind spots. But in addition to helping protect people and property behind a vehicle, cameras have a number of other benefits as well.
For example, backup cameras can help you park more quickly and safely. Rear-facing cameras give the driver a much clearer and more accurate view of obstacles behind the car, and most backup systems include a warning tone that lets you know when you're getting too close to an object.
Almost all backup cameras feature on-screen guidelines: two parallel lines that help direct you into or out of parking spaces more easily. Some also feature a middle line that can help you keep the vehicle centred in the space. Modern colour displays allow the system to change the color of the guidelines from green to yellow to red as you get closer to an obstruction. And that, combined with an audible warning from rear-facing sensors, can be very useful in preventing backover accidents.
If you tow a trailer, a backup camera can be especially helpful. The camera gives you a close-up view of the trailer as you line it up with your vehicle's hitch, while line color and audible sensors keep you posted on distance.
Monitors can be mounted anywhere in the driver's field of vision, but they're generally found in the centre area of the cockpit. Since most newer vehicles have an existing screen for the entertainment system, climate control, navigation and other functions, that display is often used for the backup camera system. Other versions use a portion of the rearview mirror as a monitor, which has the advantage of situating the display where drivers are accustomed to looking when backing up. But this type of monitor is much smaller and provides a less detailed image than one with a larger screen.
