Reviews
Visibility, glare and mirrors on Gulf roads
Styling has made cars harder to see out of, exactly as our eyes need more help. Here is how to judge the view from the driving seat before you commit.
Updated 30 September 2026
Low sun on the corniche
Two moments each day expose a windscreen completely: the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset, when the sun sits low and directly along the line of the road. On a coastal road running east to west this happens almost every day. A windscreen that is clean and free of fine scratches will handle it. One that has spent several years being wiped with dusty blades develops a haze of micro-scratches that is invisible at noon and turns the whole screen milky white when the light comes in at a shallow angle.
When you test a car, try to drive into low sun at least once. Notice the sun visors: whether they extend sideways, whether they reach far enough forward, and whether there is a gap between the visor and the mirror through which light streams directly into your eyes. Notice the reflection of the dashboard in the windscreen, which is worse on light-coloured dashboards and on cars with a steeply raked screen. These are small design decisions that you will meet twice a day for as long as you own the car.
The pillars you cannot see past
Modern cars have thick pillars for good reasons, most of them to do with roof strength in a rollover. The cost is visibility, and it falls hardest at the front pillar, where the pillar plus the mirror housing can hide a surprising amount of a junction. Sit in the driving seat, set it as you would for a drive, and have someone walk slowly across in front of the car at ten metres. Notice how long they disappear for. On some cars they vanish entirely for two full paces, which is enough to hide a person stepping off a kerb.
The rear three-quarter view matters too, particularly when you are reversing out of a bay in a crowded car park or changing lanes on a busy motorway. Turn and look over your shoulder from the driving position and see what is actually visible. Cameras and sensors help enormously and are worth having, but they are an addition to the view rather than a replacement for it, and a car where you can see out remains more relaxing to drive than one where you are constantly consulting a screen.
Mirrors, blind spots and the camera habit
Door mirrors are more useful than most drivers allow, because most drivers set them wrongly. The common mistake is to adjust them so that the side of your own car is visible in the inner edge, which simply duplicates what the interior mirror already shows and leaves a large blind spot alongside. Set them outward until the side of your car has just disappeared, and the blind spot shrinks dramatically. It takes a week to get used to and is worth the discomfort. Check, when testing a car, that the mirrors are large enough and that the glass is not so strongly curved that distances become impossible to judge.
Blind spot warning systems are genuinely valuable, especially in heavy motorway traffic where a car can sit alongside you for a long time. Treat the light in the mirror as a prompt to look, not as permission not to. The same applies to reversing cameras: they show the ground immediately behind the car, which is exactly where a child or a low bollard hides, but they compress distance and show nothing approaching from the side. Use both, trust neither entirely, and keep the habit of turning your head.
Screens at night
Large bright screens have become the dominant feature of car interiors, and they bring a problem that rarely appears in reviews: at night, a screen at full brightness reduces your night vision considerably, and it takes several seconds for the eyes to recover after you look away. The cars that handle this well dim the screen automatically and thoroughly, offer a dark theme, and allow the display to be switched off entirely when you do not need it. The cars that handle it badly have a minimum brightness that is still too high and no way to turn the thing off.
Check this before you buy, in the dark, with the car stationary. Look for a night mode, find out how to reach it, and see whether the instrument display can be simplified to show only speed. Also notice reflections: a glossy screen mounted upright will reflect the side window and any light behind you, and a screen angled towards the windscreen may cast its own reflection there. These are the details that make a cabin restful or tiring after dark, and they matter more with every passing year.
Checking visibility on a test drive
Build three specific checks into any test drive. First, reverse into a bay with a wall close behind and a car on each side, using mirrors and camera together, and notice whether you felt confident or merely lucky. Second, approach a junction where you must look right along a line of parked vehicles, and see whether the front pillar and mirror hide the view. Third, drive a stretch at motorway speed and change lanes twice, paying attention to how much head movement is needed and whether the mirror gives you a usable picture.
Add one more if you can: a few minutes in the rain or immediately after a wash, to see how the mirrors behave when wet and whether the wipers clear the driver's side properly at the top of the sweep. Rain is infrequent here, which is exactly why a poor wiper pattern goes unnoticed until the one morning it matters. A car that passes all four of these checks will feel calm to drive for years; a car that fails two of them will quietly make you tense every day.
What to take away
- Drive into low sun at least once before deciding on a car.
- Set door mirrors outward until your own car disappears from view.
- Check screen brightness and reflections at night, with the car stationary.
Calm reviews from Sharjah
Take the long way home
If you are about to spend a serious sum on a car, or you already have one that has stopped being pleasant in the heat, a conversation costs nothing. Call, describe how and where you drive, and you will get an honest answer even if that answer is that you do not need any help at all.