Vertical stripe on the side mirror of a car: what is it for

  • Dec 14, 2020
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Vertical stripe on the side mirror of a car: what is it for
Vertical stripe on the side mirror of a car: what is it for

The vast majority of modern car side-view mirrors have a strange vertical stripe that separates the smaller part of the reflective element from the larger one. Why is such a distinction necessary? Is this element of the mirror construction exclusively decorative or does it still have some kind of utilitarian function?

The thing is extremely important. | Photo: avtoblog.ua.
The thing is extremely important. | Photo: avtoblog.ua.

Many motorists, especially beginners, are probably wondering what kind of mysterious vertical dividing strip is on the side view mirror. Typically, she divides the mirror into 2 parts to 1 or 3 parts to 1. It should be noted right away that this element is by no means decorative and has a strictly utilitarian function. There is no terrible secret around the vertical strip. This is a delimiter that points to the beginning of the section of the mirror, where the image begins to distort.

This is the distortion zone. | Photo: drive2.ru.

In order to better understand why all this is needed, one should delve into the question. The fact is that spherical mirrors were widely used in the automotive industry in the past. They are good primarily because, due to their shape, they allow you to display many more objects. However, they also have a serious negative point - the image undergoes a sufficiently large distortion, which can cause dangerous situations on the road, accidents and damaged cars while parking.

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Spherical and aspherical mirrors. | Photo: drive2.com.

This is why, at some point, automakers began switching to aspherical mirrors. They give a smaller view, but do not have such a strong distortion of the reflected image. However, at the very edge of the mirror, the picture is still not true. That is why it was decided to separate the "dangerous area" of the reflecting element with such a stripe, so that the motorist would mean that everything that is reflected behind the boundary line is distorted.

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There are different models. ¦Photo: pxhere.com.

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A source:
https://novate.ru/blogs/230520/54626/