News

With more than its fair share of continental lorries passing along Hawkinge, Folkestone and Dover roads, measures to improve road safety have shown a dramatic cut of more than half the number of 'sideswipe' incidents.

The use of a Fresnel lens to reduce the carnage caused on UK roads by "blind-sided" foreign lorry drivers has now been launched nationwide by the Government after a French port trial showed a reduction in side-swipe incidents from roughly 26 incidents per week to 11 per week - an overall reduction of 59%. A side-swipe incident is when a truck changes lane and strikes a vehicle travelling alongside.

Nearly one in ten lorries involved in accidents on British roads is foreign - putting thousands of British lives at risk, damning official figures have revealed.

More than 2,300 collisions a year involve foreign registered vehicles including cars, coaches, motorbikes, vans and lorries.

And within that, more than 400 motorists a year are victims of potentially fatal "side-swipe" collisions from blind-sided foreign lorries, minsters revealed.

The juggernauts, with the steering side on the left-hand side, often fail to see cars when the pull out to overtake - "side-swiping" unwary British drivers, sometimes with devastating results.

Road Safety Minister Jim Fitzpatrick announced is to roll-out nationwide an initiative which in trials has reduced by 59 per cent the number of "side-swiping" incidents involving left-hand drive foreign trucks.

The results follow the distribution of 40,000 window-mounted lenses - known as "Fresnel lenses" - to left-hand drive trucks entering the UK across the Dover Straits.

Fresnel lenses are small wafer thin sheets of flexible plastic - about 10 inches by 12 inches - with a moulded optical lens that self-adhere to flat glass. The lenses are supplied in an envelope printed with instructions in five languages.

The Government's Highways Agency will distribute a further 90,000 lenses, targeting major ports in both England and France.

Officials at the Department for Transport said all trucks have a blind spot alongside the cab on their passenger side, which can cause cars alongside to disappear from the driver's view.

A spokesman said: "This is a particular problem for left-hand drive trucks operating in the UK, when they change lanes to overtake. The lenses offer drivers of left-hand drive vehicles a wider field of vision through the passenger window."

The trial was conducted by the Highways Agency, the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency and the Immigration Service.

A total of 40,000 stick-on Fresnel lenses were distributed free of charge at three French ports to drivers of left-hand drive lorries coming to the UK.

The new wave of 90,000 lenses will be distributed at Liverpool, the Hull ports, Newcastle, Heysham and Harwich and in France at Calais, Coquelles and Dunkirk.

Overseas hauliers who flout the rules of the road also face on the spot penalties and having their vehicles immobilised. Also, under EU rules, existing goods vehicles, first registered from January 2000, will be retro-fitted with wide-angle and close proximity mirrors on the passenger side by March 2009.