Front blind spot crashes in Hong Kong

Abstract

In 2012–2014, our laboratory had investigated a total of 9 suspected front blind spot crashes, in which the medium and heavy goods vehicles pulled away from rest and rolled over the pedestrians, who were crossing immediately in front of the vehicles. The drivers alleged that they did not see any pedestrians through the windscreens or the front blind spot mirrors. Forensic assessment of the goods vehicles revealed the existence of front blind spot zones in 3 out of these 9 accident vehicles, which were attributed to the poor mirror adjustments or even the absence of a front blind spot mirror altogether. In view of this, a small survey was devised involving 20 randomly selected volunteers and their goods vehicles and 5 out of these vehicles had blind spots at the front. Additionally, a short questionnaire was conducted on these 20 professional lorry drivers and it was shown that most of them were not aware of the hazards of blind spots immediately in front of their vehicles, and many did not use the front blind spot mirrors properly. A simple procedure for quick measurements of the coverage of front blind spot mirrors using a coloured plastic mat with dimensional grids was also introduced and described in this paper.