The good thing is that it works. The bad thing is that it goes off so often that after a little while you just tune it out. It sees too many obstacles and gives off too many false warnings. You may be coming up to a curve with a concrete barrier on the outside and it will see the barrier way out in front of you and warn you about it.

Well, you weren't going to hit the barrier in the first place.

It also goes off a lot when you are about to go under an overpass. I'm not talking about an overpass that's too low, just an ordinary overpass. These constant false alarms are very annoying and after a short time you just tune the unit out altogether.

The unit on the passenger side is supposed to warn you about obstacles in your blind spot. For instance if you go to change lanes from the left to the right lane on the interstate it will warn you if there is a car to your right so you don't run over top of anyone. This unit is tied into your right hand turn signal and only functions when your right hand turn signal is on.

Again though the same problem as the front unit...it sees way too many things as a threat and gives off tons of false alarms. Almost every time you put on your right hand turn signal it sees something...a bridge, a rock cliff, a concrete barrier, and sounds the alarm.

One of these two units is going off on a regular basis. It's truly annoying and I can't recall talking to any drivers that think these units are helpful. If you have these units your company will remove the ability to adjust the volume or sensitivity because they realize everyone will just shut the stupid thing off if you let em. It's not so annoying that you'll want to avoid them, but they aren't so useful that you'll want them either.

As far as video cameras go, they are starting to be mounted in mostly two places...the passenger side of the truck and the rear of the trailer. The video monitor will be placed on the dash or built into it.

The unit on the passenger side is meant to replace the mirror on the front right corner of the truck...your blind spot mirror. The theory is that you just have to glance at the screen on the dash in front of you instead of turning your head to the right to glance in your mirrors. There are a couple problems with this system. First of all, it's hard to tell what you're looking at on this small monitor compared to the reflection in a mirror. The image just isn't that clear.

Secondly, it works ok under perfect conditions, but the sun shining into the camera, rain, sleet, snow, and darkness all either limit you visibility drastically or sometimes completely render the unit useless. Again I can't recall a single driver telling me they prefer this unit to a mirror. I personally couldn't stand it.

Now the camera mounted on the rear of the trailer is great. It is intended to eliminate the rear blind spot both when driving and when backing up. Well, when you're driving, the same problems that limited the usefulness of the side-mounted camera plague this camera too. But when you're backing up the camera is great.