I am the same age as you. When I was 30, I was driving a 2004 Toyota Corolla, which was 6 years old at the time. I still have the 2004 Corolla, and this year it will be 18 years old. The car is equipped with all of the comfort and convenience features I have come to expect: hand-crank windows, doors and trunk which unlock with a physical key, seats with limited manual adjustment, etc. And of course, it has A/C, automatic transmission, and an AM/FM/CD stereo.
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I live in a very “family” neighborhood. The K-8 school my daughter attends is 2 blocks away. I’m 5 houses away from the big park/playground/picnic area where all the kids gather and there’s a 4-field baseball complex that I can hear from my back yard. All of which makes me very vigilant of kids scooting around. Backup cameras are limited in their field of view, I find I can glean more information by twisting my neck and looking around. But that’s only my opinion.
When my neighbor wanted to bring his van in to get the backup camera fixed I said “John, how did you back out of your driveway with your old van?” and he replied “I had to look around behind me.”
I think most people with backup cameras no longer look at the whole scene but just stare at the camera when they’re backing up. I believe that is less safe.
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I agree. I think you should look at the camera but also use your eyes to look around. if you are backing out of a driveway there are many times the sensors do not catch a car coming down the road in time. by the time it goes off the car is behind you or passing you already. the same can happen with a child on a bike. granted they are not going as fast as a vehicle, but the sensors still might not catch it in time for you to react.
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On those commercial vehicles I mentioned . . .
Yes, you can swivel your head and TRY to look behind you, but many of these vehicles don’t even HAVE a rear windshield 
Yes, you sometimes have a spotter, but oftentimes you’re going to your job site alone
Okay, you can run to the back of the vehicle and look that nobody is back there before you back up
But at some point, you’re going to have to back the darn vehicle up, often with nobody to help you
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OTOH, when I was 30 I wasn’t driving something older than I was, which is what my daughter is getting ready to do. If I had been, I would’ve been driving an early 1950’s model. Instead, I had a 1973 Mercury.
I do more-or-less agree about a backup camera. I can turn my head every which way but I still wish my Corolla had one for parking.
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The only time I back out of my driveway is when I’m driving my wife’s car. Otherwise I’m driving forward out of the driveway because I back both my cars in. I do that for convenience and safety. I don’t have to worry about backing into a kid riding his bike down the street if I don’t have to back up!
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I do that too. my daughter aways would pull in straight when she would visit. I jumped it her car to move it and that’s when I noticed how her sensors were not that efficient. my truck does not have the backup camera. it’s too old. I would not rely on it anyway if it did. I am to use to just turning my head.
Yup!
I don’t often have to do parallel parking, but the ability to view my distance from the curb via my backup camera is really helpful. And, that is in addition to being able to make sure that none of my neighbor’s children decided to sneak in back of my vehicle after I had checked my rear clearance.
People who say that they don’t need a rear view camera are reminiscent of those who say that they don’t need ABS or TPMS. Nobody is able to pulse his brakes many times per minute, or to apply the brake on just one wheel without ABS. And, no matter how often you check your tire pressure manually, a tire puncture while you are driving makes a TPMS system a very valuable commodity.
Yes, I know that Luddites will dredge-up some type of rationalization to disagree with my opinion, but I am happy that we have technology that supplements our driving.
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I agree it is nice to have. but I would not totally rely just on the camera.
Nor do I, thus my assertion that it supplements our driving.
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Still…I think I can see certain areas directly behind the car better with the camera than I can by turning my head and looking back. No way I’m going to see directly below the back bumper without the camera in my wife’s SUV. I wish my truck had a camera, to be honest. Some of the heavy equipment at work have backup camera’s. One of the Volvo loaders - you could look directly over a 6 foot tall person’s head if they were standing directly behind it if you didn’t have the camera.
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Yes,one car gives an audible beep something in the red zone, other does not, so much different than the olden days, backup till you hear glass breaking 
Back in the old days cars had full width bumpers, so if you bumped in to a car slowly it didn’t do any damage.
This and everything that follows it is absolutely wrong. Completely wrong. The body and frame are part of a system to protect the occupents. The body is NOT dead weight. You have no idea how vehicles are engineered so stop pretending you do.
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You have no sense of humor, bumpers are not all at an equal height, prove me wrong. Guy who rear ended my trailblazer at 30 mph, minimal damage for me his car was totaled. Hood really crunched up, sure maybe it was less than 30mph as when I saw he was not changing lanes I hit the gas but he still got me. Knocked the hat off my head into the back seat. No serious injury for me thank goodness. No I am not accident prone, accident 1 probably 1976, accident 2 2020. Both not my fault. Wondering why I even bother responding, but you have an uncanny ability to push my buttons.
Remember those two vertical things on bumpers that cars used to have due to bumper height mismatch? I don’t know what they’re called.
If you’ve been telling people that you survived a head on crash at 45 MPH with no seat belt, and when I call you out on it, saying that basically running in to parked car at 45 MPH is not the same thing, I understand why you’re upset. It’s fine if you want to have your own beliefs, but can they not be about important things that can put people in danger, or promoting the false advertising that the auto industry puts out about how modern cars are better?
Look at this bumper on a 70s car:
they are called bumperettes
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Some places called them “overriders”
Maybe a regional name…
maybe, when I got my split bumper camaro it had them on. it was the first thing I took off. ugly
They’re called ugly.
But more to the point, you seem to be under the impression that a 45mph crash in a '78 LTD would be preferable to a 45mph crash in a '18 Taurus. Which is nonsense.
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