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@charlie_lcc
Those are some of the right questions and some of the answers we know others might take longer to come out. The lorry was less than 2 years old and according to the Evening Standard was fitted with camera systems which might have shown the cyclist and may give some evidence on the sequence of the crash events. The company is accredited to Bronze standard under FORS which ensures basic legal compliance by does not necessarily means it is compliant with the CLOCS standard. It would, however have to meet the Crossrail standard for sensors and sideguards. Press reports say the company does work for Crossrail, I haven't seen anything to say it was working on a Crossrail job last Thursday.
The CLOCS standard is set to bring all the lorries involved close to the best practice in the industry. We are pushing for improvements and for better technology. We would like to see the 'standard' improving as better equipment becomes available. To some extent the FORS system does this.
LCC maintain that the basic design of all these tipper/mixer/skip lorries is fundamentally un-fit for purpose. They are built to an "off-road" specification which means they are higher off the ground than need be and thier bumper etc are twice as high as those allowed for "on-road" vehicles. Getting that changed is not going to happen overnight, but some manufacturers are prepared to make better lorries, we need to convince/force the operators to take them up. The latest variant will be on show at the CLOCS conference on Thursday. I am also hoping that they will show results from the TfL trials of 'intelligent' sensors which will be much more effective than existing ones.
One of the big issues in last week's crash was the appalling road layout set up between the construction sites on either side. It is like cycling down a canyon with no escape. The unconstrained left turn would force lorries to keep to the extreme right side of the lane leaving a very wide gap. At the last minute the driver would have to swing across to the left to make the turn. There are no warning signs for cyclists/or drivers about the extreme hazard of this layout, neither are their signposted safer alternate routes. Last week's victim was new to cycling in this area, she shouldn't have been put at such a risk.