When big vehicles make sweeping turns, sometimes the process can be dangerous.

The diagram shows the area between the black and red curved lines which is swept out by an articulated lorry.

My invention is therefore to equip these vehicles with a number of roof-mounted spotlights which shine eg red light onto the ground.

These are directed, by data on the current steering wheel position, to illuminate the road area which is about to be swept through.

If people or other vehicles find themselves located in this brightly coloured light, it’s time to pull back to safety.

It might also be possible to have a version of this in which a light beam is pointed from each side of the cab to each end of the trailer. If the beam is interrupted, an alarm sounds so that the driver can halt the movement before any impact occurs.

The parts for such a system are relatively simple and inexpensive. All that it requires is the detailed design of an effective, generic system, which can be fitted to vehicles of varying types and adjusted in-situ.

This system might also be particularly useful to learner drivers of commercial vehicles, for whom every vehicle feels like a behemoth.