Dashboard clutter blamed for near misses

A third of van and truck drivers have admitted having up to 30 near misses in the past year because of dashboard clutter in their vehicles, a survey suggests.

The research from Autoglass found 33% of van drivers and 34% of truck drivers had between 11-30 near misses because their view had been obstructed, with 27% of van drivers and 26% of truck drivers saying they had nearly crashed 6-10 times.

The survey of 2,000 drivers also revealed that more than a third of white van men (34%) have fast food packaging on their dashboards, nearly a quarter (24%) had cuddly toys or tacky accessories, 21% newspapers and 19% coffee cups.

Furthermore, 10% said they never cleaned clutter off their dashboards with more than a fifth (23%) of HGV drivers admitting the same thing.