But do any cars reflect the speedo in the windscreen in such a manner?
Unlikely, but I don't argue it's necessary the speedometer. Clearly an inspection of the car in question is necessary.
We know the windscreen would have to be the glass in question, as opposed to any side windows.
The London Eye photo was taken from Northumberland Avenue approaching the Embankment along a roughly SSE line of sight.
The Tower Bridge photo was taken from the southbound lane Tower Bridge Approach along a roughly SSW line of sight.
Neither of these lines of sight allows for the car to be traveling transversely to it -- there is simply no suitable roadway at either of those locations. Hence it is unlikely that either photo was taken through a side window; the photos were taken roughly along the car's line of travel.
However the line of sight relative to the car's direction of travel is not the same. In the London Eye photo, a photographer sitting in the front passenger seat (the left seat in England) would need to aim farther to the right. Hence we see the vehicle's right front fender in the London Eye shot. (Incidentally this would rule out a van, as would the apparent height from which the photos were taken.)
In the Tower Bridge photo the line of sight is more directly aligned with the vehicle's direction of travel. Hence the anomalous object is farther to the right edge of the frame, and the fender (if visible) would be out of frame.
It is extremely unlikely that a driver's dashboard indicator would be reflected in a typical car's windscreen in this manner.
However my
experimentation reveals that for the following conditions
- photographer in front passenger seat
- inward sloping windscreen
- line of sight azimuth between 20 and 45 degrees right of car's direction of travel
a center console feature will be reflected in exactly the same manner as the anomalous object. That is, a circular inset object in a horizontal plane between passenger and driver at about elbow level will produce a reflection in the windscreen at that line of sight that
- is positioned in the photographic frame identically to the photos in question
- is oriented in the image plane identically to the photos in question
- presents to the photographer an object aspect that is identical to the photos in question.
However, we don't know whether or not the photos have been cropped.
I believe the London Eye photo is full frame and the Tower Bridge photo has been cropped, since the Tower Bridge photo lacks edge noise along the bottom edge. However, different relative sizes of the anomalous