New generation of construction vehicles launched as cyclist deaths mount

A lower cab in Mercedes Benz’s Econic trucks helps drivers spot cyclists

A new generation of safer tippers, cement mixers and trucks from six leading vehicle manufacturers will be unveiled to industry decision makers at an event on 26 February marking the progress of CLOCS – the Construction Logistics and Cycle Safety campaign.

Mercedes Benz, Scania, Daf, Volvo, MAN and Dennis Eagle have all responded to calls to produce safer construction HGVs that improve the driver’s ability to spot other road users in their near-side blindspot and reduce the risk of cyclists being dragged under vehicles.

Last week, cyclist Claire Hitier-Abadie was killed in London’s Victoria area by a left-turning tipper truck operated by Gordon Plant Hire, thought to have been contracted to remove waste from the nearby Crossrail site. She was the fourth cyclist to be killed in a collision with an HGV in London in 2015. 

The new vehicles will be on display at a CLOCS conference and demonstration events at London’s Excel exhibition centre. CLOCS was initiated by Transport for London, the construction industry and its clients, and now has 80 organisations signed up as CLOCS champions, including Cemex UK, Crossrail, Mace, Laing O’Rourke and O’Donovan. 

Twenty-seven of the champions are client organisations, which have written the CLOCS safety standard into their contracutal conditions. 

Glen Davies, freight and fleet programme manager at Transport for London, was optimistic that the new vehicles would soon start to appear in construction supply chains.

“The average fleet replacement cycle is probably about six years, although operators have staggered vehicle replacement programmes. I wouldn’t put a number on it, but I am confident that once operators see the benefit they’ll start replacing them.

“There is a second hard market, so older vehicles are on the road, but in London you tend to see the newer vehicles of the Low Emissions Zone, London has a newer fleet than other areas.”

“Under the CLOCS standard, clients speak directly to operators – CLOCS champions can put CLOCS standards into contracts as specifications. At the moment, that only means retrofit safety technologies, but as the new vehicles become more available, then clients will start to respond.

“The main thing we want to achieve from the event is for more clients to specify these requirements in their documents. We want consistency among operators and consistency in road safety procedures.”

The range of 15 new vehicles, all available to order within the next few months, include tippers, cement mixer, skip loaders and trucks added to Mercedes Benz’s existing Econic range, where a lower cab means that the driver’s seating position is only slightly above cyclists – the image above shows a German version.

A spokesman said that the difference in height was around 8 inches compared to about three feet in a typical construction HGV today. The new HGVs, which can cope with the higher payload typical of construction, all have inward-opening bus-style doors on the passengers side, with a threshold just 18 inches off the ground.

Several sensors and cameras, including four mounted on the roof to give a 360-degree view of the HGV’s road position and any other vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians, feed live displays to the driver’s dashboard.

The camera feeds are are designed to be used when the HGV is manouevering at low speed, and automatically cut out when its speed reaches 25mph.

Volvo is also exhibiting a truck, tipper and skip truck with windows in the passenger door that are available to order via dealers now, while offerings from Daf and MAN are still being evaluated. 

TfL’s Davies said that manufacturers had initially been slow to respond to calls for safer construction vehicles. “Dialogue was originally quite slow, amnd some were more progressive than others. But now there’s an industry movement, and people are behind it,” he said.