Lens-Tech Hi Vue drives up safety Down Under
Visibility specialist Lens-Tech has reported the continued expansion of its Hi Vue Fresnel lens products overseas – with Transport for NSW, the New South Wales state transport agency in Australia, being the latest to have tested and approved the product as an anti-blind spot device.
Transport for NSW is now advising fleet operators to utilise Hi Vue to mitigate against lane-change and close proximity accidents, says Lens-Tech, following a trial of the effectiveness of the product in minimising passenger-side blind spots on heavy vehicles, which also sought driver attitudes towards using the lens.
“The trial found that 61 per cent of the participants reported having the Fresnel lens made driving at least a bit safer, while 15 per cent indicated the Fresnel lens had helped them to avoid a potential crash one or more times during the evaluation,” reported Lens-Tech.
Likewise, Queensland toll-road operator Transurban has identified two key account customers keen to participate in a ‘blind-spot trial’ of the Hi Vue lenses.
These customers have large fleets that utilise Transurban’s extensive road network in Queensland that takes in the Gateway Motorway, Logan Motorway and key Brisbane tunnels.
Transurban’s Jason Grennan confirmed that the greater Queensland state and local road network suffered 299 fatalities in 2022, the highest number in over a decade. Transurban is committed to making its Queensland network of around 87km the safest for all its customers.
The company will be rolling out the Hi Vue lens trial to a small group of drivers who spend the majority of their time on the network.
“From the positive outcomes reported in the Transport for New South Wales research, we expect to see similar outcomes across Transurban’s network,” said Lens-Tech.
The company emphasises the safety and affordability benefits of its Hi Vue lenses.
Low-entry cabs, retrofitted glass doors and camera systems often crop up in conversations about rendering trucks safer around pedestrians and cyclists, says the company – but it points out that these can be expensive, and while large operators with a heavy urban presence and serious buying power may be in a position or even obliged to consider such measures, that won’t be the case across the board, particularly for smaller firms that just occasionally venture in and out of London.
Lens-Tech’s Hi Vue range are among the ways such fleets can help protect vulnerable road users without incurring unsustainable costs, the company says.
Fresnel lenses are made up of a series of concentric rings, which create a short focal length. They have plenty of applications – lighthouses and searchlights among them – but the one in question is a 21x12cm piece of PVC or acrylic, depending on the model, which sticks to a truck’s passenger side window and creates a broader downward view across the blind spot.
“They are an at-a-glance device,” said Lens-Tech’s CEO, Les Haigh.
“If a cyclist or a pedestrian were moving through [its field of vision] you wouldn’t see them in your nearside window glass, but you will see them through the lens. It just gives a little more time for the driver to spot someone.”
He contends that they can offer a more instinctive means of vision than a camera system playing through a monitor.
“It’s a lot for the driver to be moving his eyes not only across the road, but also then to a monitor within the cab – it’s not a natural thing,” Les continued.
“It’s more intuitive to look through the windscreen and to the left and the right through the windows.”
The lenses were successfully tested by the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) where they beat other blind-spot safety devices during their evaluation and trials, adds Lens-Tech; and they are utilised by many major haulage fleets in the UK to improve nearside close proximity views and lane-change vision.
They have also been provided to European left-hand drive trucks by National Highways to protect against motorway ‘side-swipe’ accidents; and Lens-Tech’s lenses are fitted in the USA into the nearside ‘peeper window’ of every truck that rolls off Daimler’s North American production line.
Discounts on the Hi Vue product are available for those ordering 10 or more units.
