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@bq
Talking to the Freight Transport Association and council drivers is all very well but it's not road haulage lorries that are killing cyclists, it's construction vehicles, skip wagons and the like. These are not driven by professional truck drivers but by builders, scaffolders, etc. I doubt these people give a crap about the FTA. The problem needs to be addressed at source.
There's already a complete ban for certain hours. Those hours just need to be changed. It's not impractical, just inconvenient. The GLA may not have the power to ban them but it does have the power to charge them money and make it uneconomic, and that can be just as effective as banning.
The reason you should have the complete ban option on the table is that the inevitable compromise you end up reaching will be much more in our favour than one reached when the option is some more mirrors.
One way of making sure all lorries have the required mirrors would be to push for the LEZ to be re-activated or whatever (cos Boris froze it). Lorries new enough to pass the more stringent emissions tests that were due to come in would also have the extra mirrors. Boris probably wasn't thinking about safety when he froze the limits but if he were made aware of this consequence he might change his tune.
There's no reason why the type of very glassy cab that a bin lorry has could not be adopted for construction industry vehicles. Perhaps approaching manufacturers to push for an "urban lorry" cab or tractor design might work. I imagine that a company that builds cabs that work much better and is easier to operate in cities will sell more trucks than one which doesn't so there's a financial carrot to dangle. One of the problems is that lorry designers design mainly for the inter-city road haulage market and other customers get smaller versions of those cabs.
It's often said that if car drivers went on two wheels first they would be better drivers, and Dan mentioned cabs. Of course most cabbies rode around on mopeds doing the knowledge before they got their badges, and they still drive like dicks :-)
I'm sure you've thought of this stuff already, but I hope I've suggested something helpful