07/10/2025

Driver Blind Spots are Getting Bigger

You can blame new car design

The view from the driver’s seat is changing—and becoming more dangerous. According to a new study from researchers at the U.S. Department of Transportation's (DOT) Volpe Center in Massachusetts, the size of driver blind spots in vehicles has steadily increased over time.

The study looked at six different models of top-selling cars sold in the U.S., including the Honda CR-V, the Chevrolet Suburban and the Toyota Camry, and compared blind zones in different versions of those cars released between 1997 and 2023. Using a camera-based visual measurement tool, the researchers found the forward blind zones in every one of the six cars got bigger in newer models. The worst-performing models—the CR-V and the Suburban—had forward visibility reductions of up to 58 percent.

"It's glaring; it's shocking, but it might not be surprising, given that we are seeing vehicles get larger and taller and heavier over the years," said Becky Mueller at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, one of the report's coauthors. She is the lead engineer on driver direct vision research at IIHS, and helped develop a new method for measuring what a driver can see around a vehicle.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Fast Company.