rruck lblindspoti 'lamed for death
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LORRY DRIVER was acquitted on a charge of causing death r dangerous driving after his employer gave evidence that the tries he was using had a 40 degree blindspot.
Delamark Colin Brown, a iver with 20 years experace, who lives in Bracken )urt, Murston, near Sittingiurne, Kent, had pleaded iilty to causing the death of a ;-year-old moped driver, at ravesend Crown Court on Jesday.
Mr Michael O'Sullivan, .osecuting, told the court at eye witnesses watched as rown's 16ton Ford tipper rry moved out from the side lane in Strood High :reet, forcing the moped rider ho was in the offside lane to Aide with the central reser The moped had bounced off ie kerb throwing its rider atween the front and the rear theels of the lorry.
The rider had been run over y the rear wheels. He died in ospital 11 days later.
When asked by his counsel, Ir Nicholas Valios if he had ver seen the moped, Brown aplied no and neither had he eard any indication, such as a orn, that it was there.
The first thing he knew was slight bump on his rear ffside wheel which made him link he had run over someth ing small such as a cat. It was not until he checked his mirror several yards further on that he saw the moped lying in the road.
Mr Reuben Whittaker managing director of Robert A. Beck Ltd, haulage contractors of Sittingbourne, Kent, said that after the accident he and several of his drivers carried out thorough tests on the vehicle. They found that a cycle would disappear from view in the offside mirror for a 40 degree wedge shaped area leading back from the driver's door.
Mr Whittaker said that though he and his drivers had always realised there was a blind spot in any vehicle they had been very shocked to discover it was so large.
He said the lorries were not fitted with the standard Ford Motor Company issue mirrors. They had instead been fitted with extra large mirrors as an "optional extra."
Mr Whittaker said that since this accident almost all the firm's vehicles had been fitted with a new convex type mirror.