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The safety features are worth millions of crashes prevented and thousands of lives saved, making them remarkably cost-effective.
Capping the luxury features and size of passenger vehicles would do a lot more to bring down costs than removing safety features.
They also put a distracting video monitor in front of the driver 100% of the time, not just the 0.2% while backing. Manufacturers have moved a lot of controls to that screen, rather than leaving them on tactile buttons and switches that could be operated without taking eyes off the road.
How many collisions have been caused by distractions from the these screens?
This isn’t the fault of regulators. They would have done this regardless of backup camera regulation.
Unless they only permitted that screen to show a rear view. They could have prohibited any other use, or prohibited non-tactile controls that required ocular attention while driving. They could have required that touchscreen controls be disabled while driving. But they didn’t.
They mandated the distracting screen, and probably killed more people than they saved.
The law doesn’t mandate a touch screen, nor that it be on while driving. And why should it? The goal is to address the blind spot, not to tell automakers how to build head units.
They would have done the screens without the backup cameras.
Not if those distracting screens were prohibited.
They could ban the screens and keep the camera with a small screen that only displays the rear camera when in reverse and nothing else.