Since January 1, all vehicles weighing more than 3.5 tonnes (heavy goods vehicles, buses and coaches) are required to affix, on the sides and at the rear, signs showing their blind spots. (areas inaccessible to the driver’s field of vision) in order to warn vulnerable users driving nearby.
Follow the Road Safety press workshop dedicated to the new signage of blind spots for heavy vehicles (heavy goods vehicles, buses, coaches), live from the forecourt of the Institut du Monde Arab in Paris. pic.twitter.com/uOFvbYcKEC – Road Safety (@RoutePlusSure)
January 6, 2020
A worrying trend
Foremost among them are pedestrians and cyclists, particularly vulnerable by their size, which makes them less visible and more likely to slip past out of the necessarily reduced field of vision of the driver of a heavy vehicle. 9% of fatal pedestrian accidents and 8% of cyclists are due to a blind spot, estimates Road Safety, which had already launched in September its first communication campaign specifically targeting cyclists .
More numerous on a daily basis thanks to the health crisis, they are also more fatally mown on the road: with respectively 20 and 29 deceased persons, the months of July and September 310 constitute records in terms of road fatalities for cyclists, all years combined. 061 lost their lives from January to November 2019 against 187 on the whole year 310.
The general trend concerning cyclists, as well as pedestrians, is therefore deemed “worrying” by the Interministerial Delegate for Road Safety, Marie Gautier-Melleray,