Yesterday, in a discussion with some friends the topic of outside rear view mirrors and auto safety came up. I said that I remembered a time when outside rear view mirrors were optional and were an extra cost item. I said that they only became standard sometime in the mid sixties with the auto safety laws.

My friends told me that I was wrong and that at least one outside rear view mirror was standard.

Does anyone remember when outside rear view mirrors became standard and can anyone point me to the proof?

Thanks.

 

British cars of the 50s and early 60s came without them. They were a big Mod back in the day.

 

Yes, that is correct. I believe that American cars of the 1950s and early 1960s offered them as extra cost options. I believe that they became required standard (actually only one was required on the driver's side) in the mid 1960s with one of the early auto safety acts, perhaps the first act that also required seat belts.

I'm looking for the date and act that made them standard, or any other information about when the outside rear view mirror went from being optional to a required standard.

 

My dad had a 1956 Ford Pickup truck that did not have a passenger side outside mirror.

 

On an unrelated yet interesting note... In drivers ed. they taught us to set your side mirrors to look back down the body of the car... I don't know where I read it, but sometime in my 20's I angled the mirrors out -- away from straight back. I have always found this to be a far superior way to use the mirrors, assuming of course that my rear view is usable. My Miata had a massive blind spot with the top up (and I think the S does too, but I almost never have the top up ). With the side mirrors angled out, I eliminated the blind spot.

Just a useful tip (I think).

 

Most outside rear view mirrors in British cars in the 50s were mounted on stalks on the wings. So far away that the field of view was miniscule.

I'm old enough to remember cars which had 'trafficator' signals - illuminated semaphore arms which flicked up from the central door column. But then I also remember having to start cars with a handle inserted in a hole in the front of the car. Had to remember not to wrap your thumb around the handle otherwise it would get broken by the backlash when the engine fired.

 

My father bought an Austin sedan (Herald perhaps) back in 1961 to commute to the subway. It was about 5 years old when he bought it. It had the "trafficator signals".

We had never seen anything like it before and thought that it was the greatest thing.

 

I had a 79 Prelude and a 79 Accord, neither of which had a passenger side mirror.

 

American cars up until the '70s only had driver's side mirrors as standard. The passenger side mirror was sometimes an extra charge option. The passenger side mirror became standard in American cars sometime in the '80s.

 

This subject came up when I attended the Skip Barber Driving School. Someone asked that very question about being able to see the rear fenders in the edge of the mirror as a "reference point".

The instructors answer is there is no better reference point than the drivers seat and therefore one should not take up mirror range with a part of your car that is always in the same relationship to the drivers seat and that can NOT hurt you. In other words use the full field adjusted to see what is going on around the rear of your car (blind spot).

As recently as the late 80's right side mirrors where options. I have had them on all of my cars since installing aftermarket mirrors on my 69' Firebird.