« What's a girl to do? | Main | Engadget meeting »
December 6, 2005
Now I see the light
Every once in awhile someone does something that makes me ask (to myself) how have they gotten this far in life without knowing x or understanding y? I am not talking about random acts of stupidity, but really missing common sense knowledge. I am sure you all know what I am talking about — those things that make you wonder what planet someone has been vacationing on for their entire life. Even though it is hard not to think people are idiots when something really trivial is not known, I try to be nice.
It makes me feel a little bad though — especially because I know there must be times when people think that about me. On more than one occasion I have wondered if people thing I am clueless often and how would I know. Basically, wondering if I would know when a moment of this type of cluelessness was caused by me.
Well, I think it happened today.
Everyone knows (haha there I go assuming, but really you know) that there is a tab on rearview mirrors in cars that adjusts the mirror. Now does everyone other than me know what the real purpose of that is? I kid you not I thought that it was just there for moving the mirror without completely changing the position. The scenarios that I had assumed were things like: putting on makeup, looking at things in the backseat, or adjustments between a tall and short driver who uses the car.
Wow, so I was wrong. For anyone else who is clueless like me, the rearview mirror is actually quite neat. There are multiple mirrors and the tilt allows you to look through the mirror in a way which diffuses the light — for driving at night. The light is actually reflected of one mirror on to the other which causes the lights to be dimmed, thus not hurting your eyes. Or something like that (I don't actually know what I am talking about). It still seems a little odd to see the backseats and the headlights behind me at the same time, but it works.
So, now I have to ask if this is really common sense or a neat feature that somehow isn't used by many?
Posted by layla at December 6, 2005 9:48 PM
Comments
It's not just you. Most people are completely unaware of this. The only person I've ever seen use the tab other than myself is my father, and he was a professional truck driver for a number of years.
Another thing you might want to try, which I just tried recently and feel kind of stupid about, is repositioning the left and right mirrors. I used to have them looking down the sides of the car, basically facing rear, because this was what my driving instructors taught me to do. They also taught me to turn around and look a lot, which is stupid. Anyway, try repositioning the side mirrors to look way far out, like 20-45 degrees away from directly backwards. You can get a great view of the surrounding lanes and eliminate or drastically reduce your blind spots this way. Of course nobody ever told me this when I was learning to drive. :-P
Posted by: Daniel Lyons at December 7, 2005 9:22 AM
I remember coming to the realization that it really wasn't that important that I see my own car in my side mirrors.
Adjusting the side mirrors out a good way can nearly eliminate blind spots (on my Camry they're smaller than a typical car, on the 3 they're mostly nonexistent) and reduce glare from vehicles behind. The only downside I've seen so far is that it's sometimes useful to be able to see backwards around the car directly behind you—this is helpful when about to make a lane-change into faster-moving traffic...this is difficult to do with the mirrors canted out.
Posted by: milkman at December 8, 2005 7:22 AM
I don't know if it's common sense but I had assumed (incorrectly obviously) that it was common knowledge.
Posted by: aquafemme at December 8, 2005 4:38 PM
Yea, I have accepted that I was clueless.
Now I have at least 1 clue!
Posted by: layla at December 8, 2005 7:04 PM
It works better if you do it opposite way. With the tab pushed toward the windshield, adjust for normal driving. Then when the tab is pulled back, the primary image is the car's celing, which is less distracting/weird than the back seat.
I've witnessed nearly all of the people I've ever driven with at night to use it as intended. For those who didn't use it, it never came up wether they knew about it or not. The stuff about the center mirror and the stuff about the side mirrors that the Dans talk about above were part of the regular, included as part of public high school, NJ Driver's Education class.
Posted by: Jarrod Lombardo at December 12, 2005 3:19 PM
I'll have to try that
Posted by: layla at December 13, 2005 9:08 PM
Jarrod is right. I just stumbled on this http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question20.htm, so I thought that I'd come searching for this old post and add a much delayed comment.
Posted by: Ryan Niemi at July 20, 2006 2:22 AM
Wow, little did I expect to see you posting on some ancient post on Layla's journal.
How's it hanging?
Posted by: milkman at July 20, 2006 12:19 PM
Want you to know I will use the image linked as "idiots" in my blog. I've find it using google, and I think it's so funny. If you don't want me to post it, just write at my email address and I won't do it. Write me also if you want your site to be linked at the img as source of the photo. Thank you very much.
Sha(an italian blogger)
Posted by: Sha at December 24, 2006 9:58 AM