Lawford Kidd's Blog

Many employers with vehicle fleets are not taking advantage of new technologies to protect vulnerable road users, a new report by Brake, the road safety charity, and Licence Bureau has found.

Despite the potential to help drivers see pedestrians and cyclists and reduce casualties, only one in five HGV operators surveyed (20%) have rear-facing cameras on all vehicles, one in 12 (8%) have side-facing cameras on all vehicles, and one in eight (12%) have side sensors on all vehicles.

The report found HGV safety technologies that are mandatory under European law, such as underrun protection and wide-angle lenses, are present on almost all vehicles. Therefore, Brake is calling for more comprehensive regulation to ensure the widespread take up of technologies such as automatically moving mirrors, side-view cameras and side sensors, which can be of benefit in preventing needless death and injuries yet are currently only present on a minority of vehicle fleets.

The number of fatal road traffic accidents have increased on Scotland’s roads for the first time in almost a decade.

The figures which were revealed by the newspaper Scotland on Sunday, collected information via police reports and media reporting. Records of the incidents show that there was a stark rise in the number of motorcyclists and pedestrians killed on Scotland’s roads. Worryingly, this represented the first rise in the number of deaths in said category in seven years.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) has called on the newly-elected Government to commit to the safety of young drivers.

The safety charity is lobbying ministers to agree to a Green Paper on young drivers in a bid to save the hundreds of 17-24 year olds who are killed or seriously injured on the roads each year.

According to RoSPA, a total of 131 young drivers were killed on the roads in 2013, while 1,159 were left with serious injuries.

Google’s self-driving cars have been involved in at least eleven road accidents since they were introduced in 2009, however, according to the technology giants, the accidents have been a result of other drivers crashing into the smart cars.

According to Google, the vast majority of incidents have occurred when drivers hit the back of the smart cars when they stop. The figures come following the mainstream press in the United States criticising the cars.

Chris Urmson, the director of Google’s self-driving car programme said that there have been “11 minor accidents (light damage, no injuries) during 1.7 million miles of autonomous and manual driving with our safety drivers behind the wheel”.

Members of Cycle Law Scotland have called for reforms to the claims system when cyclists are involved in accidents with motorists. The campaign group are seeking the presumption of liability against motorists in civil cases following figures from a Freedom of Information request revealing that only a small number of drivers get reported to prosecutors following an accident.