By Joshua Speed, Business Development Manager at Wing Mirror Man


As the UK’s leading supplier of wing mirrors to the public and trade we welcome the ‘death’ of digital car wing mirrors as reported in some media recently. 


Interestingly, Euro NCAP, which is a 5-star safety rating system to help consumers, their families and businesses compare vehicles more easily and to help them identify the safest choice for their needs, has downgraded by 10 points the cars which are using digital car wing mirrors - signifying that NCAP believes them to be less safe than other cars. 


This is because of the way that these digital car wing mirrors are positioned. ‘Digital car wing mirrors’ use a camera (instead of a mirror) which projects what it sees to a screen. The screen is positioned below the wing mirror on the front inside doors near to the door hinges. This means that drivers are looking down at the screen rather than out at the traffic at eye level. 


So what this means is that drivers have a peripheral vision of the road but they don't have a critical vision of everything that is around them. This makes driving much harder and less safe in my opinion. 


There are only a limited number of car manufacturers that are using digital wing mirrors on their vehicles and one of these manufacturers, Audi. 


Here at Wing Mirror Man, we would like to see the back of digital car wing mirrors. They are overpriced and overcomplicated and less safe for the driving public, in our opinion. Some of these digital wing mirrors cost £3,000 to replace!


The manufacturers have tried to replace a mirror but instead of giving drivers an actual reflection they are giving them a moving image on a screen (which they say gives you a wider view).


Technically, it does give the driver a wider view. However, the manufacturers of these digital car wing mirrors are not taking into account that our eyes adapt to a mirror quite easily. We know that our brains understand our visual perception of a mirror. We recognise when things appear closer or further away - depending at what angle we are looking at a car wing mirror. All that is lost with digital car wing mirrors. 


With a camera, we can't judge the distances in the same way as we do looking at a mirror - and then there is the delay of the image being projected via the camera. It's not real time, is it? In other words, there is a slight time delay!


Furthermore, digital car wing mirrors distract people as they take attention away from what is happening in front of them or feasibly behind them.  If you are driving along and you look at the screen your eyes are not on the road rather than just looking around.


The manufacturers say that there is automatic recording of the screen. So if someone were to be involved in a rear end accident, the accident would be captured on the camera and would be automatically saved to the cloud which could be accessed by the insurance company in the event of any claim. 


One of the other major issues with digital car wing mirrors is that they are very expensive to replace. It is not uncommon for them to cost £3,000.


Audi supply digital car wing mirrors for two of their cars. Both are electric and both are under the moniker, ‘e-tron’. 


Honda have also used the digital car wing mirror on their Honda-e, a small electric hatchback. This uses five integrated screens for it’s dashboard, echoing back to before, this would surely distract people as it takes attention away from what is happening in front of them.


This obsession with trying to turn everything digital and completely electric can, in our opinion, actually make things less safe because there are no ‘fail safes’ anymore. If your digital car wing mirrors fail and don't work then that stops you from using your vehicle.


We are pleased that manufacturers have recognised the concerns and wider safety issues and we look forward to other manufacturers ceasing production or at the very least suspending their production pending some serious re-evaluation of digital wing mirrors. 


Sometimes in life it’s just better not to try to reinvent the wheel and the clear benefits of a good-old fashioned wing mirror. 


-Ends-