Using Your Side Mirrors Correctly

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I was driving to my mom's place yesterday and saw an accident almost happen. I was on a 4 lane road and was in the left lane on my side when the person in front of me decided to switch to the right lane. However, there was a car in the right lane about a car length behind, but the car in front of me didn't see it and started switching. Fortunately, that car that was in the right lane honked their horn and the car in front of me swerved back to their lane. It was pretty obvious the car in front of me couldn't see the other car because it was in their blind spot.

This made me think, how could this situation be avoided? There are all kinds of things you can do, including actually turning your head to check the lane or buying some supplemental wide angle mirrors you can stick on you side mirrors. But there's one solution I found that eliminates the blind spot forever: adjust the side mirrors.

For the past 5 years I've had my side mirrors adjusted as described by this CarTalk website. I have found this eliminates the blind spot normally left by the side mirrors and saves me from turning my head to check lanes before switching. I can concentrate more on what's in front of me. If everyone had their side mirror adjusted this way, we would have a lot more safe lane changing going on.

So this makes me ask the question: is this what side mirrors were originally designed for? I believe so, because adjusting the side mirrors with this method makes so much more sense than adjusting the mirrors to see the back corners of your car. Yes, you need to see the back corners of your car when you're backing up, but you only do that maybe 2% of the time you're driving your car. For the other 98% of the time, you're on the road driving your car forward with huge blind spots that could be eliminated by simply adjusting your side mirrors.

The next time you go out, try adjusting your side mirrors this way. You may ask yourself why everyone doesn't do this. Here's the link again:
http://www.cartalk.com/content/features/mirrors/index.html

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