Heavy goods vehicle drivers on the 117-mile M25 motorway in London are required to meet specific visibility standards after legislation was passed in 2019 because of the high number of pedestrian and bicyclist deaths involving heavy-duty trucks.
Similar regulations may not be too far behind in the U.S., said Steve Witt, founder of Driver Safety Technology, an IoT integrated safety, compliance and fleet management solution provider.
He said there are already talks among regulatory agencies around requiring – at minimum – a backup camera like is already regulated on newly manufactured passenger cars in the U.S.
“I believe we are going to see regulatory pressure on best practices for commercial fleets to include camera systems, minimum backup,” Witt said. “But what's also being discussed – because of the risks that come with larger vehicles, whether it's last-mile delivery vans for Amazon or tractor trailers – is that left and right blind-spot cameras are also of super high value because if you look at some of the accident data … you'll see that an alarmingly high percentage – somewhere around 40% – of these accidents are (related to) lane change.”
On passenger cars, backup cameras are no longer an option with a luxury add-on package, and while it isn’t yet regulatory, fleets are already adopting multi-camera technology as data has shown that backup cameras alone on passenger cars have significantly reduced accidents and could yield similar results for commercial trucks.
London’s legislation was the result of a root cause study in why cyclists were getting hit, and it found that those accidents were due to blind spots.
All vehicles have blind spots, but larger vehicles like heavy-duty trucks have broader areas of blind spots that can further compromise safety, which is a big driver in why more fleets are adopting multi-cam technology, said Michael Bloom, vice president of product at SmartWitness, which offers a 360-degree camera system.
