Mysterious truck makes effective cycle safety training tool

McGee should be applauded for their actions here as they are clearly making an effort, within the contrains of what they do and the vehicles available to them, to improve things.

However the bigger issue is the overuse of such vehicles and the reluctance to use rail and water for heavy freight. As pointed out by somebody far more expert than me it can be done.

I reckon a two pronged approach to tackling the issue of dangerous lorries would be the best bet: A combination of fully segregated cycling and pedestrian infrastructure to eliminate conflicts, as well as safer designs for all lorries that are required to operate in urban areas (like the LCC's design http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2013/mar/20/cycle-safe-... )

Well that's a really cool idea. I would very much like to see it in person if possible Who would've thought that a truck (a bicycles worst enemy, in my opinion) equipped with unique truck parts can possibly enforce a more bicycle-friendly society.

Depends which haulage company paid the biggest bribe?

I'd love to know where people think you could position the cab on a vehicle like that so as that it wouldn't have any blind spots.... Sure, fit a bunch of mirrors and cameras all over the truck, but the driver can only look at one or two at a time!

Common sense to me says, be bloody careful how you ride around lorries, and I'm still here

Nice idea.

So how does it stop the truck driver/bus driver or 4x4 yummy mummy having the mentality of "I'm bigger then you, get out of my way!"????

Vehicles and roads are not dangerous, it's the idiot behind the wheel that is!

PS that is a 32T truck in the picture - a 13T has a smaller and lower cab and is a relative tiddler.

In the 1950's truck drivers did not sit enthroned above other road users, and could look directly eye to eye with pedestrians and cyclists plus of course suffer the consequences of a rear end shunt (every year a few car-loads of people are wiped out when a truck goes over the car , and the truck driver can walk away). There is no real need to have high level cabs on many types of truck - the 8 wheelers have a huge space underneath the tipper body.

One of the most obvious solutions is to reduce the risk buy removing the hazard. We have major demolition and rebuilding of sites at Elephant & Castle in planning, which will require at least 400,000 Tons of rubble and muckshift away from the site. One part is 200 metres from the 4-track railway viaduct another immediately abuts the railway station, and both are less than 1 Km from the River Thames, where there is a container handling facility and wharf for loading barges (a 500T barge was being loaded the other day and barges of up to 2000T capacity can get up to Battersea - I saw a tug with 1500T coming downstream later on at Westminster bridge) Yet for a site at St Pancras over 40 of the most damaging and dangerous trucks were making around 140 trips a day for over 60 days to shift around 300,000 Tons all the way by road through congested streets and out to Pitsea, whilst less than 0.5Km from access to a rail siding or site for one, where trains carrying up to 1500 Tons could have been loaded.

That 5000T/day muckshift with direct costs in haulage alone in the region of £14,000/day and indirect costs in emissions & roads damage, could have saved a lot of people money as well as being safer. Another site is also going at the same time (Francis Crick & King's Cross Central) both still sending out waste and soon likely to be demanding concrete and incoming materials, both with the potential for rail delivery practically to the doorstep, but since TfL closed down their Freight Unit, there is no (Freight) TfL delivery.

As an example of the sheer level of avoidable raised risk, the foundations of the Shard required 30 big concrete trucks operated round 24 hour shifts with 3 drivers for several days - when a siding and silo set up on the rail viaduct nearby (the South side of London Bridge has had tracks taken away, so this could have been used to deliver bulk materials, and concrete directly pumped - removing all the trucks from the road.

So lets make a big push for consolidation of the spoil. By contrast the excavated millions of tons from Crossrail is largely going quietly away by rail and barge. One tunnel site is sending the spoil out from Park Royal, and around to Canning Town where it heads for transfer to barges to go downstream. Take a look at www.cboa.org.uk to see just what can be done

I've spent enough time in HGV cabs to be aware of the visibility problems they have and it sounds as if McGee have done the Right Thing in terms of equipping their fleet with all the gadgets they can.

That said, I'm generally pretty unimpressed by these "sit in a truck and experience the lack of visibility" exercises - if you know the vehicle's unsafe, FIX THE BLOODY THING.

I hired a transit van to move my stuff to my new flat, and couldn't believe the sheer size of the blind spot on the left side. I pulled up to a junction where the traffic flowed left to right (one way only) and the side road (where I was) was angled towards the right as well. Couldn't see a damn thing of the approaching traffic. I literally had to climb over to the passenger seat to see if it was clear, then climb back over, get it in gear and get away ASAP and just bloody hope that nothing had come along in the meantime. Stay clear people, because if they don't have all the kit that these McGee trucks have, the drivers are on blind faith half the time.

Is it me or is there something extremely complacent about the idea of educating other road users in the location of tipper trucks' blind spots?

Any vehicle which needs to be manoeuvred in urban settings should have good all-round visibility to assist the driver and protect other road users.

That said, HGVs represent the biggest danger to cyclists and more should be done to separate them. By that I mean making quieter roads more attractive to cyclists by improving permeability and making routes flow, whilst restricting HGVs to main roads and discouraging them from taking GPS short cuts.