Comments by "Laurence Fraser" (@laurencefraser) on "Back-up beepers: Obnoxious, but getting better - and spreading!" video.

  1. Used to be very common for cars to have three turn signals on each side here: front, rear, and one on the side, usually on the front doors. This was because you often couldn't See the front or rear ones from the sides because of how they were mounted. These days, the usual practice is for the front and rear lights just wrap around the corner of the vehicle so you can see them from the sides instead.
    4
  2. Mobility scooters can also have reverse alarms of the beepy sort. Having one back up right next to you In A Shop is Awful. I imagine getting your foot run over by such a scooter would Also be awful, and they're not as loud as the ones on trucks, but still... As for reverse lights, around here it has become Fairly standard in recent times for cars to have White lights on the rear that turn on when going backwards, in addition to the red... basically running lights that indicate you're looking at the back of a car (or other vehicle, based on their number and position) and get Noticeably brighter when the breaks are activated. There's been a law/regulation on the books for longer than I've been alive that cars Can have white lights on the rear, so long as those lights only activate when going Backwards (and likewise, Can have red lights on the front... so long as they only activate when going backwards), but manufacturers didn't actually Bother until... honestly, I don't remember, but it was rare enough to be noteworthy if you saw it in the early 2000s, and these days cars that Don't have such lights are rare enough to be noteworthy. There are also parking lights. From what I recall, those tend to be a sort of yellow-ish white, often postioned so they make the rear license plate Very obvious (by way of shining right on it from the sides and sort of using it as a reflector) and so you can see just enough around the rear of a car that you won't bash your shins on the tow bar (if your car has one). Might help a bit with getting things in and out of the back of the car or changing a rear tire, I guess?
    1