EC law on retrofitting mirrors
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TRUCKS IN THE European Ufflon will have to be retrofitted with blind-spot mirrors or equivalent devices under new legislation proposed by the European Commission.
It wants goods vehicles of 3.5 tonnes or more registered after 2004 to be retrofitted within year of the adoption of this proposed Directive. Vehicles registered after 2001 will have to be equipped within two years; trucks registered after 1998 within three years.
Trucks registered more than 10 years before the Directive comes into force would be exempt, as would vehicles registered in the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium, which have their own national schemes to deal with blind spots.
Under the Directive, operators would have to fit Class IV and V "close proximity and large angle mirrors", or alternative mirrors "whose field of vision covers not less than 99% of the total field of vision at ground level" of these specially designed systems.
Vehicles that cannot be fitted with new mirror systems could use "other devices of indirect vision".
The EC reports that on average 400 people a year die in Europe "through accidents caused by drivers of larger vehicles who are not aware that other road users are very close to or beside their own vehicles".