Looking back: How to set up side and rear view mirrors?

There seems to be a ton of articles online telling you that you’ve been doing things wrong. Well, guess what, you’ve been setting your wrong too. At least the engineers at the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) might think so.

According to the engineers at SAE, there is a proper way to adjust your mirrors. The objective is obviously to maximize the area that we can see behind us. There is, however, some confusion about whether we should be able to see a part of the car as well. We tilt our mirrors a bit inwards for this express purpose. We are so used to doing it that we don’t even think if it is needed. Now a paper released by SAE seems to suggest that it is indeed unnecessary.

According to the paper, tilting them inwards actually creates a blind spot large enough to hide any car passing halfway next to us. This becomes especially hazardous when trying to change lanes at speed.
How do we then adjust our mirrors? The idea behind the rear view mirrors is for the rear and the side mirrors to act together like a widescreen. This means that we should be able to see a car approaching from the rear and then become visible in the side mirrors as it passes us. This will allow us to accurately calculate where the car is going to be at any point of time. Therefore, the side mirror needs to act like an extension of the rear mirror from the same driving position, without moving our head.

To achieve this we start by adjusting the side mirrors. Seat yourself in the driving position and start moving towards the driver side window till you can touch the window with your head. Now adjust the left side mirror till you can see just the rear of the car in the mirror. Now when we come back to the driving position, we should be able to see nothing but the rear left-hand side of the road in the mirror. Now, we can adjust the right side mirror in the same way. This time we move towards just above the center console instead. Again from the normal driving position, we should be able to see nothing but the rear right side of the road.

Adjusting the rearview mirror seems like a no-brainer – just keep it parallel to the rear window. However, we have to remember that all the mirrors should together act as a widescreen. To aid this, adjust the rear view mirror by tilting it in your direction, with the right hand while seated in the normal driving position. Adjust it so that it becomes the center of your rear view widescreen together with the two side view mirrors.

Now you can see the amount of space that the mirrors working together can reveal to you. You should be able to see cars approaching from behind in your rearview mirror and then move into the side mirror in the direction they are approaching from.