Mirrors, horns and warning devices on a buggy

Why an open vehicle still has blind spots

It seems unlikely that a vehicle with no doors and no rear window can hide anything, and yet buggies do it constantly. The roof struts sit exactly where a person walking towards the machine from ahead and to one side will appear, and they are wide enough to conceal an adult at the distance that matters. Add a canopy edge, a loaded rear deck, or two passengers on a rear seat, and the view behind goes from open to almost nothing.

Posture is the second reason. A buggy driver sits low, steers with both hands, and often has a passenger and a load alongside. Turning the whole upper body to look behind is harder than it sounds in a seat with no support, on a machine that is already moving. Mirrors do not replace looking round. They reduce how often it has to be done, which is worth having.

Flat glass, convex glass and what each one costs

Flat glass shows a true image and lets the eye judge distance and speed correctly, over a narrow field. Convex glass shows far more width and makes everything in it look smaller and further away than it really is. Both of those facts are useful and both are dangerous if the wrong one is trusted. A driver deciding when to pull across a service road from a convex image will misjudge the gap.

The usual compromise is what car makers arrived at: a flat main surface with a small convex section at the outer edge for the blind spot. The same logic applies on a buggy, though the mirrors are often small enough that a plain convex is all that will fit. Where that is what is fitted, brief the drivers on what it does, because a convex mirror combined with an assumption of a true image is worse than no mirror.

One thing no mirror on a buggy does is show the ground immediately behind the vehicle. A small child, a kerb, a dropped tool and a trailing hose all sit below the mirror line and stay invisible. Reversing on a site with people is a look-round job, and where the view is genuinely blocked it becomes a get-out-and-look job or a second-person job.

Where a mirror should be mounted

Vibration is what ruins mirrors on small vehicles. A mirror on a long arm bolted to a flexible panel blurs at working speed and is useless at exactly the moment it is needed. Mount to the most rigid point available, which on most machines is the windscreen frame or the roof strut where it meets the body, and keep the arm as short as the field of view allows.

Position balances seeing behind against catching things. A mirror that stands out beyond the width of the roof will meet a doorway, a hedge or a gate post before long, and a folding or breakaway mount is worth having on any machine that lives near buildings. A centre-mounted panoramic mirror on the roof edge sidesteps the width problem and gives a wide, if distorted, view of everything behind.

Set them up with the driver sitting normally rather than leaning across, and set them for the way the vehicle is actually loaded. A mirror aimed for an empty deck shows nothing but the load once the deck is full, and that is the day the view behind is needed most. Do it when the mirrors go on and again after any change in how the machine is used, because a fleet that swaps drivers daily loses its mirror settings faster than anything else on the vehicle.

Using a horn well

A horn is the only warning device that is aimed and chosen. It is used at a moment, at a person, by somebody who has decided it is needed, and that is precisely why it carries meaning where a continuous noise does not. Fit one that can be heard over the site rather than the loudest one available, and put the button where a thumb finds it without letting go of the wheel.

Using it well is a briefing matter more than a hardware one. Early and quiet beats late and loud: a short note at a distance makes somebody look up, where a long blast at close quarters makes them jump into the road. On a campus or a hospital site, a horn used constantly turns into a complaint, and drivers who never use one at all are usually the ones braking hard instead. Both extremes are worth naming when the drivers are briefed.

Reversing alarms and the fatigue problem

A reversing alarm is automatic, which is both its strength and its weakness. It works when the driver has stopped thinking, and it stops meaning anything in a yard where machines reverse all day. Alarm fatigue is not a theory, it is the ordinary result of a sound that is technically right nearly all the time and relevant almost never. The device has not failed. The attention it depends on has.

Where a site runs several buggies together the alarms overlap, and none of them tells anybody which machine is actually moving. That is the situation in which a beacon, a rule about reversing speed and a habit of not reversing where people gather do more good than any noise. It is also the situation in which somebody eventually disconnects one, which is worth anticipating rather than discovering.

• Tonal beepers carry a long way and are hard to place by ear, so they annoy neighbours without telling anyone where to look.
• Broadband or white-noise reversers are directional: people hear where the machine is, and the sound falls away outside the area.
• Self-adjusting alarms track background noise and drop in volume on a quiet morning, which is what keeps complaints down on a residential edge.
• A switch to disable one is a policy decision rather than an accessory choice, because a switch fitted without a rule becomes a switch left off.

Designing the warnings around the site

The right set of warnings is a property of the ground rather than of the vehicle. A grounds yard shared with lorries wants a beacon and an audible reverser. A quiet campus footpath early in the morning wants marker lighting, a horn used sparingly and a driver going slowly, and a shrill alarm there will generate complaints and be defeated before long.

So write the list from a walk of the site. Where does the machine meet other vehicles, where does it meet people, at what times of day, and who is on the ground: staff who know the buggies exist, or visitors who do not. Places where visitors and machines mix want conspicuity, which means outline, colour, lighting and lower speed. Places where machines meet machines want audible warnings and clear routes.

The test of the design is simple enough. Go back a few weeks after fitting and see what is still switched on. Anything taped over, unplugged or muted was the wrong choice for that site, and the honest response is a different fitting rather than a memo about compliance. Ask the drivers as well, since they will say what is unusable long before the paperwork catches up with it.

Keeping the fittings working

Warning devices break quietly and get checked rarely, because none of them fails in a way the driver notices. A mirror knocked out of line still looks like a mirror. A horn with a corroded contact still has a button. An alarm silenced by mud in the sounder is silent in exactly the way a switched-off one is. By the time anybody notices, the fitting has been doing nothing for weeks.

Where the buggy is hired, the fittings supplied are part of what is being hired and disabling them is not a local decision. If an alarm is causing a genuine problem on a site, ask rather than unplug: there is usually a quieter reverser or a different beacon that solves the complaint properly and leaves the machine warning people as it should.

• Put mirrors, horn and any alarm on the walk-round as a working check rather than a glance.
• Re-check mirror aim after anything is fitted to the back of the machine.
• Look for tape, cable ties and unplugged connectors, because those are reports about the fitting.
• Replace a cracked mirror rather than living with it, since a split image is worse than a small one.

Who sets the requirement

On private ground, the requirement is set by the landowner and by the employer's own assessment of the work being done. That is where mirrors, alarms and beacons are decided, and the Health and Safety Executive publishes guidance on workplace transport that is a sensible starting point for anyone writing that assessment. Nobody else is going to hand you a list. Written down, dated and reviewed, that assessment is also the thing that answers the question afterwards.

On a public road the position is different, and the requirements follow the route the vehicle is registered under, with DVLA as the authority. Golf clubs and venues sit between the two: many have their own policy about what a buggy on their ground must carry, and that policy governs whatever else has been fitted. Ask the club rather than assume the answer.

Common questions

Do golf buggies need mirrors?

Not under any general rule on private land. The landowner or the employer decides, usually through a risk assessment, and many sites where buggies share space with people or vehicles do require them. On a public road the requirement depends on the route the vehicle is registered under. Whatever the rule says, a machine with a loaded rear deck is hard to reverse safely without one.

Are convex mirrors better than flat ones?

They are different rather than better. Convex glass shows much more width and makes everything look further away, which helps for spotting somebody in the blind spot and misleads badly when judging a gap. Flat glass judges distance correctly over a narrow view. A flat main mirror with a small convex section is the usual compromise where there is room for it.

Should a buggy have a reversing alarm?

It depends on the site. In a yard shared with other vehicles, yes. On a quiet path used by residents or patients at unsocial hours, a tonal beeper causes complaints and gets disabled, and a broadband or self-adjusting reverser is the better fitting. The useful question is which of them will still be working and switched on in a month.

Can I fit a flashing beacon to a golf buggy?

An amber one, yes, and it is the colour people read as a slow or working vehicle. Blue and red flashing lights are reserved for emergency use and do not belong on a buggy. Put it on a switch so it is used where there is traffic to warn, since a beacon flashing everywhere all day stops registering with anybody who sees it daily.

Why do staff keep switching the reversing alarm off?

Because it is the wrong alarm for that site. A tonal beeper in a quiet setting becomes genuinely intolerable, and people solve intolerable things themselves. Treat a disabled alarm as information rather than as misconduct, then fit a directional or self-adjusting one and see whether that survives. The fitting that stays switched on is the one doing the work.

Is a horn enough on its own?

On a small, quiet site with staff who know the machines, often yes. A horn is aimed and deliberate, so it keeps its meaning where a constant noise does not. Where the buggy reverses regularly, or shares ground with visitors and other vehicles, it needs help from a beacon, marker lighting and some discipline about routes.