Wider is better but sharper is not: optimizing the image of camera-monitor systems.

The replacement of rear-view mirrors with camera-monitor systems introduces new opportunities for design, such as altering the image quality and the rearward field-of-view. We investigated how the image quality and field-of-view might affect the distance and time-to-contact estimation of other vehicles. Eighty-six subjects estimated either their egocentric distance to a stationary vehicle (Experiment I) or the time-to-contact to an approaching vehicle (Experiment II).