Small old bump will never "knock a wire loose". This is serious industrial level equipment that must handle rain, snow and other shitty conditions including vibrations of a wide frequency range. And all that at least for the warranty period of a vehicle.
> And all that at least for the warranty period of a vehicle.
You got me till this point, and you prove we should be cautious about such tech. I live in one of the richest cities in the world (certainly one of most expensive), and the amount of 10+ year old cars is huge. Go to country side, and they become majority, with many clocking 15+ years.
For physical mirror to fail, you need to break it or completely lose it, and then its obvious whats the situation. Electronics have more components that can fail, and as an IT guy, I know what can will eventually fail (ie how many digital cameras work flawlessly after 10 years of daily use?). Last thing I need is to have an potentially unreliable critical safety feature in the car.
I used to drive an old 1979 - that car had few electronic conveniences, but left me sitting on the side of the road more than once. It had also developed a problem where it couldn't idle for more than a few minutes because the engine would stall (mixture to rich, maybe?). My current oldest car is a 2003, it has electronic fuel injection, as well as a number of other electric conveniences - remote control mirror, power seat, cd changer, etc. I've only done routine maintenance and replaced a leaking engine seal, and that car has been 100% reliable and has never left me sit.
My much newer 2007 car has a lot more electronics (more airbags, automatic breaking, adaptive cruise control), but so far, still has had no problem, but it's only 3 years old (bought in 2016), so time will tell.
There are numerous studies that show that cars nowadays are dramatically more reliable, both in when and how they fail. There are always going to be maintenance parts but I really can't imagine that cameras are getting loose wires. Besides it's literally two screws and a clip to replace these. They are cheaper to replace than mirrors.
