Safe Speed Forums

Hi All,

I'm doing a bit of a thrust on SMIDSY accidents and windscreen pillar obscuration.

I have Bike Magazine, Robert Gifford of Pacts, and Spen King on board. I've just been pitching it to Top Gear and they'll investigate a bit with a view to possibly doing a story. Bike magazine will run a "spread" in the next issue.

I had a nasty experience earlier this week when Claire's car broke down and we had a Vauxhall Mariva on hire for a couple of days. In just 120 miles of mostly rural driving I had two nasty surprises out of the screen pillars despite the fact that I was highly aware of the issues:

1) After moving my head to look around the right A pillar at a roundabout I believed the road to be clear, and checked left, checked right again and a car had appeared from nowhere. I can only assume that my head movements had "equal tracked" the movement of the other car.

2) Approaching a pedestrian crossing at about 5mph in traffic I noticed that no one was waiting to cross but pedestrians were moving on the pavement on the right side (far side) of the road. As I rolled across the crossing I was very surprised to see that two pedestrians had changed direction and entered the crossing while completely hidden by the offside A pillar.

I have long been concerned about screen pillar obscuration as an accident causation factor and I (vaguely) maintain this website:

http://www.smidsy.org.uk

Last year I exchanged a series of emails with the Highway code people and eventually got them to agree to list the risks of screen pillar obscuration for possible inclusion in the next full edition of the highway code.

There was an article on the subject in What Car magazine in October 2003.

Spen King has been working on the problem since 1995 and recently had this published in AutoCar:



I have found some 1963 UK research on the problem and a copy is on its way.

Apparently there are two USA research reports and I'm waiting on an email with details.

With 19.7% of all crashes (and probably 50% of junction crashes) having "Looked by failed to see" recorded as a causation factor we should probably expect screen pillar obscuration to figure in about half of those.

Phew. It's quite a subject. From my point of view, the first priority is to tell drivers.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Paul, you want to try driving a truck, the pillar/mirror blindspots can be horrendous, you can be blind to a car when it is ten times the distance away than when you are seated in a car.
You also have a front blind spot as well, where you cannot see even a pedestrian walking acroos the front of you.
A friend did a demo at a schooland got ten kids to line up in front of the truck, the line starting touching the motor and trailing away forwards from the truck, he only saw four of them, six if he leaned forward, so there were still four kids that were invisible.
Some companies are now fitting front look down mirrors to try to eliminate this problem, I have driven a truck fitted with one, and it was excellent.

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Semper in excreta, nur quantitat variat.

Yep, as an ex-biker who once got SMIDSY'D himself I can now empathise with the problem having switched to cars.

I wonder if the optical properties of the glass, right at the edge by the pillar could be altered so that the driver could effectively look around it. Of course, the effect would have to be such that it didn't cause too much distortion during normal driving.
Just floating an idea there, it may be daft, it may now.

Some years ago I had a near miss at a roundabout which was entirely my own fault. I started to enter a traffic island and suddenly became aware of a white metro which had been completely obscured by my windcreen pillar. Needless to say this scared the S*** out of me and from that day I always take the time to thoroughly check my blind spots before I pull into traffic.

Until we have glass technology that gives a full 360 degree field of vision accidents are unfortunately inevitable due to blind spots. I will follow this thread with great curiosity to see what others have to say regarding this issue.

Ric.

I believe Which Magazine did some research into this last year.
Was very interesting reading.

That's very interesting.

Do you have it? Can I have a photocopy?

Other than that, can you give me any more reference to help me find it elsewhere?

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I shall have a look at home when i get in tonight.
Thinki still have the magazine around.

Oops, sorry.
Wrong magazine, it was What Car and the research they did is still on the web at:-

http://www.whatcar.co.uk/News_SpecialRe ... _ID=178348

Hope this helps.

happens all the time to me, what actaully scares me most, is when somehow, a curve has been engineered so that the angle of the bend is in a perma-pillar-blindspot, and I'm forced to lean over to the passenger side to see.

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--
uzz

Bike Magazine (September issue) with this story is out today.

Bike and Safe Speed have sent out a joint PR on the subject:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/pr134.html

The SMIDSY page has been extensively updated:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/smidsy.html

We've had some great support from various quarters including: PACTS, BMF, MCIA, RoSPA and the ABD. (With quotes on the SMIDSY page.)

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I belive Volvo have done quite a bit of research into this. They have looked into ways of reducing the immpact of pillars in terms of obscuring a drivers' vision.

They have actually produced a conept car which has small glass panels in the pillrs to allow the driver more vision. However, these innovations do have to weigh up the compormise between better vision and safety.

As a last resort, perhaps car manufacturers should remind motorists that their heads do actually move! If you can't see clearly because of a blind spot, move your head to see better. I belieive with appropriate setting of mirrors and observation, there are only a handfull of cars who's construction prevent a motorists from being able to see properly.

I own 2 'modern' classics and an early 90's cavalier and I think the all round vision and space awarness of the older cars (square shape) makes the classics less of a liability with regard to SMIDSY and other similar scenarios.

andrew

Hi there. Been lurking for a while now, reading this excellent forum. Thought I might as well chip in on this.

I currently own three cars, one from the 80's one from the 90's and one from the 00's. The latter car is a current model Mondeo (company car) and the vision is awful due to the thick pillars and it also has a couple of rather nasty rear blind spots - problems which I've never seen reported in the motoring press. I had a near accident one day turning right out a junction at night when although I thought I'd checked sufficiently, I had tracked the movement of a cyclist behind the pillar, luckily I was able to abort my manouvere.
The other point is that my oldest car, a mk2 Cavalier has excellent all round visibility while my other, a mk3 Cavalier has better visibility than the Mondeo but it's certainly not on a par with it's predecessor. Therefore, if design trends continue as present......

Edit: Just read the What Car? report and their rating of the Mondeo in second place of all family cars I find astonishing although I do not have experience of other manufacturers cars.

Seems that this is an aspect of car design that needs attention.

I saw the Bike mag article. Bike is very good but it gets alittle anti car and pro bikers are allways in the right, but that is a side issue. I have a new Honda Civic Typs S today as a couresty car (great car) and the visabilty to the rear from the rear view mirror was awfull. I drove Ford F350 Superduty pickups while I worked in the USA and their A pillars were just massive. That combined with the general bulk of the beasts made pulling out of junctions a tricky operation.

I work on a farm and modern tractors have humungous mirrors and, on my tractor at least, they block acreas of view when combined with the A pillar and exhaust pipe. If you see a tractor pulling ou of a field,please bare this in mind, we are big and slow and need to nose out to see!

Further to my comment above:

Having worked on cars most of my adult life I have noticed that the actual screen pillars aren't getting any thicker it is the plastic trim that is attached to them that is getting thicker etc. in order to create the one piece jelly mould effect of the interior and to cover the horrible bits that used to be exposed such as the window seal and securing lips although they would be covered with a thin piece of material or similar now it is the big chunk of plastic.

I also had a few shots of these people carriers and I think they are awful cars full stop but the front vision and the quarter vision is dangerous as you have that big dashboard then the quarter lights next to it and all before the windscreen.

Andrew

I don't think this should be a "last resort" at all.

Why isn't it the thrust of the campaign mooted here and in BIKE magazine.

Instead of complaining that the pillar is blocking the drivers view. Move the drivers head until vision is gained. Are these vehicles really undriveable? I think not!

I have also just posted in the Vegetation thread (aparrently that's where the vegetables hang out) and posted a similar answer. The problem with vegetation at the side of the road or the body parts of your car obscuring vision is that the driver is too damn lazy or careless to look around it. Get a grip and tackle the problem here. What's a motorcyclist going to do when he/she gets knocked off? Claim on the tree's insurance, issue a writ against the A-Pillar designer. Come on!

You'll be telling me that crashes happen on "bad roads" next. No such thing, just poor and rotten drivers.

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It's Champion Man

WTF? Did you actually read the article?

The problem needs to be approached from both sides:
1. Tell drivers the problem exists and get them to take it into account until a better car design is achieved
2. Work to change the design of A-pillars to remove the problem

You seem to be suggesting that only doing 1. is enough. If that's your argument then I suppose you also think that radial tyres and disc brakes are a waste of time.

Speaking as a motorcyclist, anything that makes me more difficult to see is a bad thing. If bad design creates blind spots that could increase the risk of me falling victim to a SMIDSY then I want it sorted. Better that than finding myself sitting in a wheelchair saying "it's a pity that driver didn't take the time to really look before they crippled me" In the meantime I will tell other people about it and ask them to consider possible A-pillar obstruction whenever they are sitting at a junction while I also continue to support efforts to encourage manufaturers to remove this potential danger from their designs - Volvo certainly seem to be trying.

Unfortunately there pillar will always be obscuring part of the driver's view, just a different part, which would be fine if everyone else on the road would keep still. But they doun't and it is entirely possible that as the driver moves his/her head they will track the movement of another road user.

i checked the list in the what car link and my current tin box (nissan almera) comes out as exactly average of those tested.

which scares me bloody well rigid! i know to look around the a pillar and move my head to get the full picture of what may be coming towards me. mainly cos i also ride a motorbike and i have had numerous smidsy's over 20+ years on two wheels. and i absolutely don't want to smidsy another bike, or anyone else come to that.

the bit that scares me is that my car is average and i know exactly how much effort i need to put in to see around the pillar. what worries me is that i know a large proportion of car drivers won't put that effort in.

the bikers answer is to always position yourself to be able to see the driver (then they should be able to see you), and then assume the dozy bugger will pull out on you anyway. as i said to a friend learning to ride, "treat everyone else on the roads like they are homicidal maniacs"

paranoia is the best self defence!

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the day i stop learning is the day i get put in a box

(reactivating an old topic)

The authors have just sent me a 2002 report from the Minnesota Department of Transportation. They set up a screen pillar obscuration simulator test and...

* 11% of the best drivers crashed
* almost 60% of the worst drivers crashed
(figure 4.2)

Here's the report: http://www.lrrb.org/pdf/200216.pdf

_________________
Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

My car is awful for it!

Audi TT