I saw this idea a couple of years ago, marketed as an aid to help American truckers doing blind side reversing (where your trailer goes out beyond your mirror, and you have to climb across the cab to see where its going), I wanted one as I have to blind side a horse trailer, but I couldn’t find a decent plastic mirror that was light enough for the sun visor.

It was marketed as Blindside Helper.

I’ve been driving a Renault Master this week, the designers may have failed to make any of the 4 cupholders useable, but they did catch up (9 years after the blindside helper) and added a large mirror to the passenger sun visor to cover this blind spot. I found it by accident whilst sitting in traffic…

Never mind going backwards with a trailer…it covers the whole of the blindspot behind the nearside B pillar, such a simple idea and really effective. Its good enough to cover two lanes so you can see traffic about to join lane 1, whilst you are in lane 2, which is normally outside the range of a wide angle wing mirror. Also covers those sneaky cyclists who come up on the inside and wait just behind the door pillar where you can’t see them!

Why is this not mandatory on any vehicle without rear windows?! I’ve found some cut-to-size mirror on ebay but I don’t have a clue if I should get Acrylic, Styrene or DiBond…so many choices

[and before anyone comments…traffic jam after lights, start-stop engine off, handbrake on, etc]

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Because just like using your mobile whilst in charge of a vehicle people won’t take any notice.

Come on Drac…I’d been sitting there ages, not moving, before I noticed the guy on the inside was perfectly positioned for a photo example.

The first photo was taken in the safety of a parking space later in the day.

I’d been sitting there ages, not moving, before I noticed the guy on the inside was perfectly positioned for a photo example.

I guess you proved my point. 😀

Fair cop, to be honest it was a difficult decision to stop Facetiming my mates so I could take the photo on my own phone, or use my work phone which was halfway through a youtube video 😈
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Haha!

You can get a variety of convex mirrots that do this, the small ones at the base of your wing mirrors might be adjustable to get a better angle too.

Yeh, but lets be honest, even the large wide angle mirrors that vans have under the main mirror are rubbish, the ones on my Iveco Daily are twice the size of those above. They give a bit of extra angle but anything more than a meter or two from the van is still in the blind spot.

Those little stick on ones are even worse, you might notice a bit of movement in them but nothing useful, especially if not perfectly clean.

A huge mirror at the top of the windscreen however…its right there whenever you look left, and you can work out what brand of bike they are riding before they even pass the window!

Take another look at the photo, the visor mirror is taking over right where the wide angle mirror loses the car, covering the whole lane plus the pavement.

You can get better one our big old sprinters make a grand job of them you can tell if they’ve lined up their valves with logos. It’s a nice touch that though in the sun visor.

😆

The latest Iveco ones aren’t actually that bad, you can adjust them too. But my old daily had small ones, they were only useful for inspecting a patch of the floor somewhere under the door.

Neat idea! I occasionally have to drive commercials as part of my job collecting and delivering vehicles, and all of them have no rear vision, apart from the side mirrors, so there are huge blind spots.
The nine-seat LDV mini-bus I collected from the naval college in Dartmouth today was very typical, constantly aware of how little I could see either side.
Ok on the A30/M5, but anywhere where there’s traffic close by and peds, etc, had me in a bit of a sweat.

I think I’m aware of it, but every now and then I realise I can still lose stuff in the blind spot, it is a bit scary when it happens.

Last month I was moving from lane 2 to lane 1. Just going over the lines when I saw movement in the wide angle mirror, it was small motorbike alongside me. He could’ve beeped, accelerated, or braked as I’d been indicating for a bit and I always change lanes gradually, either he wasn’t concentrating or he had a head cam and wanted a ‘near miss’ as he didn’t do anything at all, didn’t even try to maintain a the same gap by moving left.

I switched back to my original lane, waved sorry and guessed that he’d filtered alongside me as I entered a roundabout just beforehand and tried to undertake. But I looked at my dash cam footage afterwards and I’d passed him in the queue, and he was still between the same cars, so he’d just managed to stay completely out of my sight all the way across the roundabout and for a hundred metres afterwards.

Wouldn’t work for me in most vehicles. At 6ft3 a folded down passenger visor creates a massive blindspot at my 10 o’clock position which in most cases would be a worse problem than the issue it was solving..

I drive various vans at work up to 7.5T. None of them are ideal for rear views. I’m glad most of my miles are motorway. The best ones have a standard N/S mirror, a wide angle mirror, and one above the door angled 45 degrees down to cover the blindspot alongside the door.

Always amazed at the number of drivers who will undertake a large van which is signalling left on the motorway taking on trust the fact I’ve seen them and won’t move left until they are past.

I’m always amazed when a van signals left on the motorway. Or right for that matter.

Wonder if this twunt had one…
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_38w-EkqB3s[/video]