In a move to prevent pedestrians and cyclists being killed in collisions involving heavy goods vehicles, all lorries will soon have to be fitted with additional blind spot mirrors to ensure vulnerable road users and pedestrians can be more easily seen by truck drivers. Daniel Attwoodreports.
There have been several fatal crashes mainly in town and city centres involving pedestrians and cyclists who have been crushed under the wheels of lorries after they were apparently so close to the vehicle that they were caught in a blind spot and not seen by the driver.
Now the Transport Council of the European Union has agreed on a directive requiring the retrofitting of blind spot mirrors to all HGVs registered since the year 2000.
The Minister for Transport Martin Cullen had wanted the directive to go further, and had earlier supported the Commission's original proposal that all HGVs registered after 1998 should be retrofitted with the mirrors. However, this date was brought forward to 2000 at the behest of other EU member countries.
It is expected that this directive will become law within the next 12 months and will require that all retrofitting be completed by 2010.
This latest directive complements an earlier one that requires that all new HGVs registered from the start of next year must be fitted with a set of additional mirrors and other "vision improvement systems" to significantly reduce a driver's blind spot.
In February 2005, a Dublin cyclist was crushed under the wheels of a lorry.
At the inquest, the lorry driver said that despite checking all of his mirrors before setting off he did not see the cyclist. This is despite the fact that the lorry was fitted with additional mirrors, although it still had a blind spot on the passenger side of over 1.5 metres. It is accidents like this that the directives are aimed at preventing.
Indeed, following a series of such fatal collisions in Dublin, Minister Cullen, who attended the EU Transport Council meeting yesterday, asked Ireland's HGV distributors to investigate if it was possible to retrofit blind spot mirrors to all lorries registered since 1992, but due to design and technical problems with earlier lorries this was not possible.
The Minister then asked the country's HGV distributors to begin fitting the mirrors to all new lorries from October this year - three months ahead of the legal requirement.
According to Department sources, following this request HGV importers have begun sourcing lorries with additional blind spot mirrors despite it not becoming law until early next year.
Under the first directive, which has already been rubberstamped by the European Parliament and transposed into Irish legislation, blind spot mirrors must be fitted to all new HGVs over 7.5 tonnes from January 2007.
This second directive requiring the retrofitting of blind spot mirrors will now go forward to the European Parliament for its consideration.
It will then have to be agreed by both the Transport Council and Parliament before it becomes law by the end of next year.