It's getting harder than ever to see out of modern "safer" cars, too. I regularly entirely lose cars hidden by the B-pillar on my Model 3. I have to rock my head back and forth before each lane change to make sure something's not hidden there. It's compounded by the fact that the driver's side mirror doesn't physically move far enough to the left to cover the blind spot like it would in most cars, and our terrible flat mirrors in the US don't provide the wide angle that european driver's side mirrors have. (still working on sourcing a european mirror glass; currently Tesla only sells the entire mirror body+motors+glass as a single part, for $400ish)
It's VERY easy to lose a pedestrian in the A-pillar (windshield pillar) of modern cars, particularly due to how large these units have gotten to accommodate side curtain airbags.
Note that the fixtures on the body don't have to 100% optically obscure things for them to be 'invisible' to the driver.
https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-s...
>It gets even worse. Not only can we not see though solid objects; research has shown that we tend not to look near to the edges of a framed scene. In plain language, we tend not to look at the edges of a windscreen. So, not only do the door pillars of a car represent a physical blind spot, but our eyes tend not to fixate near to it, leading to an even bigger jump, or saccade, past a door pillar. This is called windscreen zoning.
It's VERY easy to lose a pedestrian in the A-pillar (windshield pillar) of modern cars, particularly due to how large these units have gotten to accommodate side curtain airbags.
Note that the fixtures on the body don't have to 100% optically obscure things for them to be 'invisible' to the driver.
https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-s...
>It gets even worse. Not only can we not see though solid objects; research has shown that we tend not to look near to the edges of a framed scene. In plain language, we tend not to look at the edges of a windscreen. So, not only do the door pillars of a car represent a physical blind spot, but our eyes tend not to fixate near to it, leading to an even bigger jump, or saccade, past a door pillar. This is called windscreen zoning.