ABSTRACT
Introduction
Although they allow good forward visibility from the driver's seat, larger vehicles such as sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) and mini-vans tend to limit visibility to their rear and sides. Further, contemporary designs of all vehicle types, intended to improve structural integrity, aesthetics and aerodynamics, and enhance vehicle crashworthiness, may have inadvertently resulted in restricted visibility from the driver's seat (Quigley et al., 2001). These newer vehicles, combined with the ageing of the driving population, could conceivably result in an increase in the frequency and severity of backover crashes. However, because many of these crashes occur on private property and, consequently, may not be reported in official collision databases, the magnitude of the safety problem can only be roughly estimated. In the United States, there are approximately 228 fatalities and 17,000 injuries per year resulting from backover crashes involving light vehicles (NHTSA, 2010). In December 2010, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking whereby it tentatively concluded that 'providing the driver with additional visual information about what is directly behind the driver's vehicle is the only effective near-term solution at this time to reduce the number of fatalities and injuries associated with backover crashes' (NHTSA, 2010: 76187).
