Blind spot behind enclosed goods vehicle
Department for Transport received 3 coroners' reports about this hazard between 23 Jul 2014 and 20 Jul 2021.
They came from 3 different coroners in 3 coroner areas. A similar concern was raised again 2 times after the first warning.
No published response from Department for Transport was found for the earlier reports.
The story, report by report
Spacing grows with the time between reports.
“was not fitted with an audible warning device that operated automatically when reverse gear was engaged”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ No published response from Department for Transport was found for this report.
- 11 months laterIdentical hazardConfidence 0.90 · higha different coroner
“significant blind spot behind the enclosed back Mercedes Sprinter, which extended the width of the vehicle, and would have reached back almost to infinity behind the vehicle.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ No published response from Department for Transport was found for this report.
- 6 years 1 month laterIdentical hazardConfidence 0.92 · higha different coroner
“It is likely that the driver was checking his nearside mirror or the road around him when the pedestrian stepped out behind the reversing lorry which resulted in a complete blind spot once she was behind the vehicle.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Repeated from the earlier report:behindblindspotvehicle
Department for Transport responded.Response (PDF) ↗
- All reports to Department for Transport
Each row is one judged link between an earlier and a later report. Open a row to read both quotes, found word for word in the originals.
2014 → 2015Richard Turner11 months after Kenneth Paul · different coronerIdentical hazardConfidence 0.90 · high
Identical hazardConfidence 0.90 · highBoth reports highlight the absence of an automatic audible warning/reversing aid on Mercedes Sprinter vans, creating a blind spot that endangers pedestrians during reversing.
Kenneth Paul · 23 Jul 2014
“was not fitted with an audible warning device that operated automatically when reverse gear was engaged”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Richard Turner · 26 Jun 2015
“significant blind spot behind the enclosed back Mercedes Sprinter, which extended the width of the vehicle, and would have reached back almost to infinity behind the vehicle.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ 2015 → 2021Sarah Lewis6 years 1 month after Richard Turner · different coronerIdentical hazardConfidence 0.92 · high
Identical hazardConfidence 0.92 · highBoth reports describe a blind spot behind a goods vehicle that prevents the driver from seeing pedestrians while reversing. They both identify the absence of a rear‑facing camera or other reversing aid as the key safety gap.
Richard Turner · 26 Jun 2015
“significant blind spot behind the enclosed back Mercedes Sprinter, which extended the width of the vehicle, and would have reached back almost to infinity behind the vehicle.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗ Sarah Lewis · 20 Jul 2021
“It is likely that the driver was checking his nearside mirror or the road around him when the pedestrian stepped out behind the reversing lorry which resulted in a complete blind spot once she was behind the vehicle.”
Original on judiciary.uk ↗
No published response from Department for Transport was found for this report.
No published response from Department for Transport was found for this report.
No specific action could be extracted with a verified quote.
- Each report's concerns were extracted by Nemotron 3 Nano on Nebius Token Factory, each with a quote copied from the report.
- Concerns from reports to Department for Transport at least six months apart were compared by meaning (Qwen3 embeddings) and wording (TF-IDF).
- The closest pairs were judged by Nemotron 3 Super with reasoning on. Only identical or closely related, with confidence of at least 0.70, are shown.
- Every quote was checked by code as an exact substring of the original text. Names of staff and family are redacted, and the deceased are named by report title only.
| Link | Meaning | Wording | Judge | Coroner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 → 2015 | 0.83 | 0.34 | Identical · 0.90 | different |
| 2015 → 2021 | 0.76 | 0.27 | Identical · 0.92 | different |
Judge model: nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b. How Nemotron did the work · Full methodology.
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This shows that a similar concern was raised again after an earlier report. It does not say why, and it is not a finding about any organisation or person. To report an error, see the corrections route.