National Highways KNOW THE ZONES

27 February 2023

National Highways launches a HGV safety campaign 'Know the zones'.

HGVs make up 9% of SRN traffic and are essential to keep the economy running. When they are involved in accidents this not only causes delays to other traffic but affects goods reaching their destination. National Highways have created a campaign to increase awareness and knowledge among road users of the limited visibility areas and vehicle limitations of HGVs. Large vehicles, such as heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) have zones of limited visibility and are considerably longer, heavier, and more powerful than standard vehicles. They also need more stopping distance.

Car and van drivers significantly underestimate the limitations of an HGV, which are: blind spots and areas of limited visibility, longer stopping distances, wider turning circles, lane restrictions, speed restrictions and size.

All road users need to be aware of HGV driver limitations and this National Highways campaign aims to raise awareness and knowledge of these areas of limited visibility with road users, thereby increasing confidence. It also acts as a gentle reminder to HGV drivers to take extra care when initiating an overtake.

The campaign offers a range of assets for partners to use, including campaign narrative that can be used for the creation of web content, blogs, a newsletter, or any internal communications to road users. The range of digital and social resources has been created into a toolkit and is for use on social media channels, websites, or any other digital channels, for example, digital screens which can be downloaded here.