XPO is one of the Top Ten global provider of transportation and logistics services they run the business as one highly integrated network of people, technology and physical assets in 32 countries.

Jenifer Moss is the General Manager for the Moores contract for XPO Logistics, she is responsible for 29 vehicles, 30 drivers over 4 depots, Wetherby, Luton, Motherwell and Gloucester.

As a company, XPO had the FORS Bronze certification and they were not looking to go to FORS Silver, however, Moores has an increasing number of customers working in the London area and some of them requesting that you have FORS Silver before you can even drive on site.

Jenifer tells us “So that was written into the contract and dropped onto my desk to sort out” Jenifer called upon the help of Emily Dunn who works for XPO centrally who is a bit of a FORS oracle. It just so happens that at the same time Jenifer had received an email from Vision Techniques offering a demo.

XPO was going to go with the standard turning left alarm to get to that Silver standard, but they kept with the cameras and then upgraded to a visual and audible alarm, rather than going with ultrasonics system XPO decided that actually being able to see into the blind spot was better than something detecting in the blind spot. So it was a visual rather than a sensor. Feedback from drivers found that anything that beeps is quite distracting and they are more likely to try and turn it off or ignore it, but if they can physically see something, it is getting their attention whilst not annoying them.

Jenifer tells us her thoughts on the alarm on the side of the vehicle to warn cyclists “ I do think its good, again it takes the ownership off just the driver you see a lot of truck drivers going through all this training and certificates but there is not much for the cyclist, they don’t have to pass a license so you have to make something as simple as possible to get their attention. I sometimes think they ignore the blind spot stickers to be fair but something that is audible and visual, that is flashing at you can’t be missed.