I've been concerned about the rear visibility in the MY due to the rear cross beam blocking so much of the view. This video also notes a potential safety issue. Thoughts?
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Rear cross beam a big issue?
- Thread starter MY-Y
- Start date
I went from a Chevy Traverse to the Y, and yes there is significant loss of view but it took me about a day to get used to it and start using the mirrors and the display that shows the surrounding cars. If you really need to see an expansive view out the back there’s a easy access button to show the rear camera view.
dontblinkdoc
Member
If anyone is coming from a model 3, it feels like the 3 has better visibility but most of it is up in the sky and pretty useless. If you can see well enough in a 3 I expect you can see well in a Y.
How about the potential issue of the cross member pushing your head down when rear ended?
Atari2600
Active Member
Keep in mind you can be 5'6" with very short legs and a very tall torso or 6'2" with really long legs and a short torso. I know people like to use overall height of a person when talking about headroom and legroom but I think it is somewhat flawed logic.
SCMountainDad
Member
i am 6'1'' and i just checked mine out after watching your video. It's true if the seat is reclined all the way my head touches the cross bar. If I bring the seat back up one notch it was comfortable and not an issue for me sitting normally. If you are tall you can't recline the rear seats all the way without hitting your head.
dontblinkdoc
Member
Sounds literally undrivable and broken /s
Yep, I just whent out to check myself, since I don't remember it as an issue. He definitely reclined the seat to be able to touch the beam with his head. It's a couple inches behind the head rest if the seat are up right.
He also uses a very high angle to make the view out the back window look even worse than it is (it's not great, but not nearly as bad as he shows). I'm 6'1 and even with the seat positioned at max height, I'd have to sit an a very thick phone book (if I could find one
) to get even close to his angle. He may have an exceptionally long torso, but very few people will be sitting that high.
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When I test drove a Y, I thought the visibility was better than the 3. The view is smaller, but more useful. Like you said, the 3 is mostly sky.
I don’t know if you noticed that giant screen in the cabin, but it makes the rear window visibility effectively a non-issue.
I'm more concerned what happens to rear passengers in a rear end collision. I'm hoping that the head restraint is tall enough that this is a non issue when the seat isn't fully reclined.
The screen is nice, but i don't want it displaying the rear camera instead of the nav all of the time. I often trailer with no rear visibility, so I'll deal with that aspect.
If you are reclined and over 6ft tall, you can feel the beam, so you'll know if you need to adjust the seat more upright. It does not even have to be fully upright, just not fully reclined.
It's really a non-issue.
While, I'm not concerned about this in any fashion at all, it certain is interesting though from a usability/design perspective. Why even allow the recline to go that far if pretty much any adult will not be able to lean back all the way without having their head resting on the beam? Most rear benches don't recline at all, so just having it recline the first 2 notches would be a big bonus, why go that extra step knowing it would be awkward.
dontblinkdoc
Member
I doubt it will be awkward for everyone. My wife will likely love it on long drives with other people where she may be in the back seat. Not everyone is tall enough for it to be an issue. I'm sure kids, who are old enough to not need a booster, will enjoy it.
Couldn't agree more.
Aarons12
Enjoying my Pearl White LR AWD with inductions
Teslas are by FAR the safest cars on the road. there is nothing higher than a top safety pick plus but tesla blows other cars away in safety. for every argument you make up about a particular imagined scenario where someone is hurt, their engineers can show you something else, probably in a more common accident scenario, where the tesla would protect like no other car.
People under 6 ft tall should not have an issue. That is a large percentage of the population.
Also, many people that use the back seat are kids, and most kids are less than 6ft tall.
For long trips, letting the kids recline to sleep better is a nice feature.
empiredown
Member
Why is SO MUCH being made out of the rear end issue? The car has passed multiple safety checks to be certified and produced. Why do you need to see better out of the rear when you are driving? And for those few times you do, why can’t you then use the camera briefly. I do.
We initially didn’t like the tunnel view, but now it doesn’t really matter. A non issue. I also don’t even adjust the rear view from my wife’s setting now. It’s unnecessary. For the few times I do need to see, I incline my head. If that doesn’t suffice, I pop on the camera.
Honestly, stop looking for excuses not to love the car and you WILL love it. If you don’t want to do that, it’s your choice. But it’s a choice, not a given. This is NOT a Gremlin or Pinto from the 70’s people...
ß
We initially didn’t like the tunnel view, but now it doesn’t really matter. A non issue. I also don’t even adjust the rear view from my wife’s setting now. It’s unnecessary. For the few times I do need to see, I incline my head. If that doesn’t suffice, I pop on the camera.
Honestly, stop looking for excuses not to love the car and you WILL love it. If you don’t want to do that, it’s your choice. But it’s a choice, not a given. This is NOT a Gremlin or Pinto from the 70’s people...
ß
Where are we getting 6ft as the cut off for this? The guy in the video is 5' 8" which is a very average height. Like I said, I'm not really worried about it, I just kind of wonder why. Why not just not let it recline that much? Or if you wanted that degree of recline, design some sort of indent in the trim to allow for a little head space.
TWANGnBANG
Member
This is my video, and I can answer a few issues raised. First off, I didn’t set out to do anything other than test drive a Model Y and share my thoughts. I had no preconceived notion of how it was going to turn out one way or another. As I said in the video, I had very limited time with the vehicle- it wasn’t the video I *wanted* to make, but it was the video I *could* make.
I didn’t manipulate camera angles to make rear visibility look worse than it is or anything of the sort. I simply stuck two GoPro cameras under the glass roof using standard mounts and rolled with the footage I got. The footage is an accurate depiction of what the rear hatch looks like and how little of it is open for a rear view. The only way to accurately depict the actual view would be to point a 35mm-equivalent camera at the mirror from the driver’s position. I didn’t have the time or equipment to do that.
Quick tip for better visibility out the back of the Model 3- adjust the mirror much lower than you would ordinarily adjust it. I put the top of my view at the line where the rear window tint makes the view useless, anyway. That will change the angle to where you’ll be able to actually see vehicles much closer to you than if you just center the rear glass in the mirror. Yes, you’ll be looking at your rear passengers every time you check the mirror, but it’s a big improvement in seeing traffic behind you.
As I mention in the video, the rear camera is super helpful in the Y, but the UX still doesn’t allow keeping it up and seeing navigation at the same time. TesMat makes a cool clip to trick the UI into keeping enough of the camera view up to be very useful while still revealing what you need to see in navigation, and I think that hardware proof of concept will end up a software feature of the UX fairly soon.
There’s no question that people of all heights are able to sit in the back seats of the Y without making contact with the rear crossbeam, but that’s not what I was evaluating. I’m a Clinical Exercise Physiologist who focuses on post-injury reconditioning who is married to a spine specialist, so headrest support is something we always test in cars. That’s when I discovered that my head would make contact with the crossbeam before being supported by the headrest in both reclined positions. The safety issue is that the job of a headrest is to stop the momentum of your head with your neck in neutral alignment. The points where my head came in contact with the rear crossbeam, my neck would be forced into forward flexion before the seat back would stop the momentum of my shoulders sinking into the seat. This very well could cause a life altering injury. I say twice that I’d like this to be independently tested, but currently, there aren’t any tests done where the car is rear ended with dummies in all seating positions, let alone done for each position of recline for the rear seats. For all of the safety certifications, etc., that we think the Model Y went through, it is highly doubtful that this issue would be revealed in any of the tests or evaluations.
Part of why this is such a concern is that rear end collisions are by far the most common collisions on the road all day/every day. It’s great that you can sit comfortably without your head on the headrest or touching the crossbeam. One reviewer talked about using the crossbeam as a head support. However, Teslas are otherwise among the absolute safest cars on the road. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect they remain among the absolute safest for all passengers, while using features of the car in ordinary ways, during ordinary collisions. I am not convinced of that with the reclined positions of the rear seats in the Model Y.
I also say multiple times that I don’t want people to take my word for anything I point out with the Model Y. I simply want people to check these things out themselves before committing to a purchase and to consider a Model 3 and the money you’ll save if you find the same things to be issues for you.
I didn’t manipulate camera angles to make rear visibility look worse than it is or anything of the sort. I simply stuck two GoPro cameras under the glass roof using standard mounts and rolled with the footage I got. The footage is an accurate depiction of what the rear hatch looks like and how little of it is open for a rear view. The only way to accurately depict the actual view would be to point a 35mm-equivalent camera at the mirror from the driver’s position. I didn’t have the time or equipment to do that.
Quick tip for better visibility out the back of the Model 3- adjust the mirror much lower than you would ordinarily adjust it. I put the top of my view at the line where the rear window tint makes the view useless, anyway. That will change the angle to where you’ll be able to actually see vehicles much closer to you than if you just center the rear glass in the mirror. Yes, you’ll be looking at your rear passengers every time you check the mirror, but it’s a big improvement in seeing traffic behind you.
As I mention in the video, the rear camera is super helpful in the Y, but the UX still doesn’t allow keeping it up and seeing navigation at the same time. TesMat makes a cool clip to trick the UI into keeping enough of the camera view up to be very useful while still revealing what you need to see in navigation, and I think that hardware proof of concept will end up a software feature of the UX fairly soon.
There’s no question that people of all heights are able to sit in the back seats of the Y without making contact with the rear crossbeam, but that’s not what I was evaluating. I’m a Clinical Exercise Physiologist who focuses on post-injury reconditioning who is married to a spine specialist, so headrest support is something we always test in cars. That’s when I discovered that my head would make contact with the crossbeam before being supported by the headrest in both reclined positions. The safety issue is that the job of a headrest is to stop the momentum of your head with your neck in neutral alignment. The points where my head came in contact with the rear crossbeam, my neck would be forced into forward flexion before the seat back would stop the momentum of my shoulders sinking into the seat. This very well could cause a life altering injury. I say twice that I’d like this to be independently tested, but currently, there aren’t any tests done where the car is rear ended with dummies in all seating positions, let alone done for each position of recline for the rear seats. For all of the safety certifications, etc., that we think the Model Y went through, it is highly doubtful that this issue would be revealed in any of the tests or evaluations.
Part of why this is such a concern is that rear end collisions are by far the most common collisions on the road all day/every day. It’s great that you can sit comfortably without your head on the headrest or touching the crossbeam. One reviewer talked about using the crossbeam as a head support. However, Teslas are otherwise among the absolute safest cars on the road. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect they remain among the absolute safest for all passengers, while using features of the car in ordinary ways, during ordinary collisions. I am not convinced of that with the reclined positions of the rear seats in the Model Y.
I also say multiple times that I don’t want people to take my word for anything I point out with the Model Y. I simply want people to check these things out themselves before committing to a purchase and to consider a Model 3 and the money you’ll save if you find the same things to be issues for you.
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