If you haven’t bought a car in a while, you might not know that all new personal vehicles sold in Canada have a backup camera.

Transport Canada made rear-view cameras mandatory on all passenger cars, SUVs, light pickup trucks and minivans sold in Canada as of May 2018. That means any post-May 1, 2018 light duty vehicle will include a rear-view camera.

The law doesn’t require older vehicles to be retrofitted with a backup camera system.

Backup cameras are intended to prevent pedestrians – often children who may not be easily seen in the rear of the vehicle – from being run over when a driver backs up.

The law came into effect at the same time in Canada as in the United States. U.S. Congress passed a law in 2008 requiring regulators to require the technology, and Canada came out with its own law in 2016. Automakers were given several years to prepare for the required new technology.

“This helps children be seen and provides Canadians with one of the best safety technology systems to reduce back-over collisions,” Marc Garneau, then Canadian minister of transport, said back in 2016.

Canadian officials estimated in 2016 that back-over crashes were responsible for more than 1,500 injuries and 27 deaths in Canada between 2004 and 2009.

Backup camera systems display what’s directly behind the vehicle when the vehicle is in reverse. It is displayed on a screen, often built into the radio system or in an iPad-style screen on top of the dashboard, or even in a monitor built into the rear-view camera.