Why convex mirror is used in vehicles?

If rays of light are carrying the image of a car in a mirror, and those rays travel outward before hitting your eye, the car that reaches your eye is not exactly the same as the car that reflected the light. To be more specific, it's not in the exact same location. To our eye, the image carried in light reflected from a curved surface (actually any surface, curved or not) appears to be located where those light waves intersect. This is the focal point. Diverging light waves, however, would only intersect if they were to continue through the mirror, to the other side. This means the image of the car seems to be located behind the mirror, at a greater distance from your eye. The images reflected in a convex mirror, then, look smaller than they are -- they're compressed. This is why convex mirrors are used on cars: They reflect more in a smaller space. In other words, a convex mirror has a wider field of view than a flat one, which can only reflect the area right in front of it. With a wider field of view, the driver has more information about the area to the right of the car. This is the safety trade-off. A convex mirror sacrifices accurate distance perception for a wider field of view. And a wider field of view means a much smaller blind spot than you have on the driver's side of the car. read less