Breakthrough driver’s mirror eliminates blind spots without warping the world

Ever since Ray Harroun first bolted a mirror to his car so he could see what was behind him during the inaugural Indianapolis 500 in 1911, drivers looking back have had to deal with the blind spot where the mirror couldn't reach. Many automakers offer cameras and even radar to monitor that spot, but a new mirror developed by a Drexel University professor could offer a stunning and safer view without electronics -- and it's closer than it appears.

The mirrors on the driver's side of every modern car have a field of view of about 15 to 17 degrees wide -- the angle between two adjacent numbers on a clock face -- offering a narrow slice of what's going on behind the car. It's easy enough to make a mirror that curves for a wider field of view, as passenger-side mirrors do, but that curve distorts the image, which is why passenger side mirrors always warn riders that objects are closer than they appear.

Blind spots remain one of the larger dangers posed to drivers; a 2008 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety estimated that if all cars were equipped with some kind of blind spot monitoring system, the nation would be spared 457,000 crashes a year. But such systems have only begun to filter down from luxury vehicles, and previous studies have shown it takes up to two decades for a new safety feature to spread through the majority of cars on the road.