Insider Info of Car Mirrors

I have an aunt who is an engineer for the US Department of Transportation. She does many interesting things involving technologies that can do incredible things like prevent car crashes by allowing the vehicles to communicate with each other. Those technologies are already in some cars and they are now standard in all new cars. She also told me about some of the ideas they have for the future. She told me that in a short time, side view mirrors will be obsolete and off all cars. Instead, a camera will be pointed backwards from the side of the car, and the picture will appear on a high technology wind shield. This will save on gas mileage by making the cars more aerodynamic, and it will also prevent mirrors from being sideswiped and broken off, because they will no longer be there. This is something currently in the works, and, in fact, on the day I talked to her, she had the privilege of test driving with mirrors on the windshield in the fancy simulator below at the US Department of Transportation at the Volpe Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She personally was not a fan of this but she recognizes it can save a lot of money by giving cars better gas mileage, and she knows she just has to get used to a major change like that.