Where do you aim your mirror?

[JanGeo]

Ahhh the beauty of motorized mirrors - when I back up in the xB we have these poles "protecting" the bulkheads into the basement that are just about even with the windows and with enough blind spots in the rear quarter I came close to hitting them more than once so use the outside mirrors to line up with when backing up. If it tilt them down all the way I can see the rear tires and the curb so I don't hit it and can check for flats while driving too. Sometimes they don't see sideways enough for that blind spot where passing cars are NOT supposed to be hanging out but often do. Would be nice to get another fisheye inside the door window for those highway merges. Would be really cool to be able to fold them in with remote cable control for those times pulling into tight spots or some extra MPG during high speed driving.

[dieselbenz]

If you own a car that also happens to be sold in Europe (this includes most Japanese models) or just about anywhere else in the world, theres a good chance that a curved glass version of your outside driver's side mirror exists. Flat glass driver's side mirror used on US market cars is the exception rather than the norm. US legislation requires a completely flat mirror on the driver's side and if the manufacturer so chooses, a curved glass mirror on the passenger side with the words "OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THE APPEAR" etched into the glass. Don't ask me why, its just the way America is. You won't find these words or flat glass anywhere else in the world.
Last summer picked up this driver's side mirror in Europe with a dotted line down the middle. The whole mirror is parabolic but the area to the left of the dotted line is substantially more curved from side to side in order to cover your blind spot. In practice you can see from directly behind to 2 lanes over and next to the car with this mirror. Its perfect. Every car in America should have had this mirror from the factory. This goes along with my rants about e-code headlights, but thats another story all together.

With the flash you can clearly see the demarcation line between parabolic on the right, and curved on the left.


In natural light the dotted line fades away and you are left with a clear view and no blind spots. The mirror has a very wide field of vision without shrinking objects like a traditional parabolic mirror.


The moral of the story is contact a dealer or check out ebay in Europe. You'll probably find curved or parabolic mirror for the driver's side of your car. This should be a direct drop in swap. No double sided tape required.

[rh77]

Since I backed out of the garage a month-or-so ago, hit some ice and thwacked the driver's side mirror, the glass only tilts outward now.

It was an inadvertent way to force a blind-spot-free setting. Now instead of the usual setting of using the right-hand side of mirror even the length of the car, it points outward and shows any vehicle in my blind spot. I still do the over the shoulder check of the lane out of habit, but a few tests proved that unnecessary and fully functional.

RH77