The two cars I tried, a Ford Focus and a Toyota Prius have a very different feel in terms of blind spots.
For example, the rear-view mirror on the Prius isn't all that useful. The back window is small, and more importantly narrow, so it is hard to get a sense of vehicles that are behind you to the left or right that might be attempting to pass you from either of those directions.
On the other hand, the back window on the Focus is large and wide, and the rear view mirror provides a much grander view of the status of the road behind you.
However, I noticed with the Focus that that wide view from the back provides a false sense of security, because vehicles may still be in your blind spots but you are led to believe that no one is trying to pass you, while on the Prius due to the narrow back window, you are constantly reminded to look behind your shoulder before and during a lane change.
That got me thinking... if my rearview mirror could "see through" the frame of the car, and show me what the road looks like from all directions, as a driver, my road sense would keep me alert to trafic that is approaching behind me on neighbouring lanes. Therefore, if I had a couple of cameras installed at either side of the roof of my car (on the outside), aimed at the "blindspot" area, and an ability to superimpose the image somehow on what is seen on the rearview mirror (with little distortion), then my rear-view mirror would essentially eliminate the blindspots.
While searching for more info on the topic, I bumped into a paper that covers current technology for eliminating blindspots as well as how to use Augmented Reality in a low cost and efficient way for that purpose.
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