Why does the passenger mirror on a car read, “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear,” but not the driver’s side?

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Why does the passenger mirror on a car read, “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear,” but not the driver’s side?

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4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Passenger mirror on cars is curved to give driver a wider field of view. The trade-off for that distortion is that things look further away than they are — hence the warning reminding drivers.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because the curve of the mirror on the passenger side gives you a wider field of view but makes it all of the stuff in the view smaller.

Anonymous 0 Comments

That mirror isn’t quite perfectly flat so it changes the field of view, but a side effect of that is it alters how big things look (making them smaller). If you’ve ever seen one of those big dome mirrors in a store, similar idea

Anonymous 0 Comments

The driver sits much closer to the driver’s-side mirror so there’s less need for it to be curved to give it a wider viewing angle. It’s that curve that also makes objects seem farther away. But my car has a curve on both mirrors so it does vary from car to car, and different countries will have different regulations about this too.