A garbage truck driver was yesterday sentenced to jail for 14 months and banned from driving for 27 years by the Kowloon City Magistrates' Court yesterday.

Forty-six-year old Ng Yuen-fai pleaded guilty to 16 charges. The driver, without a valid licence, knocked down a 49-year-old woman in Mongkok in September while reversing the vehicle.

In delivering the judgement the judge said Ng was irresponsible because he was still driving when he lost his driving licence. Calling it a serious case, the judge also said his dangerous driving led to the death of another party and Ng's licence could be suspended for lifetime.

A representative from the drivers industry, however, thought the sentence was a bit harsh.

Kong Kwok-ping, Vice Chairman of Tai Po Drivers' Association said it was difficult for truck drivers to avoid reversing accidents. Often drivers had to drive and unload goods by themselves. This made it difficult for them to keep an eye on the surrounding environment, he said.

The environment in some loading areas like fresh market was too loud, making it hard for pedestrians to hear the horn pressed by the driver when he was reversing, he said.

Pedestrians also had to be careful while crossing road, he added.

To reduce accidents involving reversing cars, he suggested having a mandatory installation of a reverse monitor device on all trucks of two metres visual view to allow drivers to have a clear view at the back. He said installing a reverse alarm would also help. The alarm would trigger automatically when a truck reverses.

Yesterday Citybus and New World First Bus announced that they would use four million dollars, or $2,500 per bus to install vehicle reversing camera systems on their 1,600-bus fleet.

Safe reversing

Paul Li, the two companies' Head of Operations and Engineering, said they would ensure safe reversing and let bus drivers get a better view of conditions behind the vehicle. "After the camera systems are installed, it would provide bus drivers with more confidence when they are reversing because drivers will have a better judgement after they have a full view of the back of bus," he said.

The locally bought camera systems would be installed at the bus rear and inside the driver's cab, he said.

At the rear of bus, a camera with waterproof wide-angle lense and infra-red night vision function would be installed to capture road image in three metres length and width, which exceeds the bus width of 2.5 metres.

Inside the bus driver's cab, a seven inches LCD colour monitor would be installed to display the road image at rear of bus, he said.

They had installed the camera systems on some buses and conducted trials for a year. Those buses installed with the systems did not have any reverse accident, he said.

William Chung, Head of Operations and Planning, said there were some minor bus reversing accidents like hitting an object, which happened inside depot or at night when drivers were parking the bus.