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Vorad is in interesting system, and does work well, though I personally think it is not worth the money it costs.
I find it quite annoying, as bsavage said, there are lots of lights and beeps that will distract you, the theory is that this will make you alert to an object in your "Safety Zone", ideally the sensors pickup the objects in your blind spots, making you aware of their presence when you can't see them.
My experience with VoRad was early in it's development, around 1998-99, and the system no doubt has improved, the unit I had installed on my tractor took a lot of tweaking to get it right. After it was setup, it did work well. The reason I had it was because I was working for a company that was considering installing it on the majority of our trucks, I was one of about 100 test trucks, and worked with the folks at Eaton to setup and adjust the platform. I was at the time a trainer for that company, and normally had students driving with me.
I found that the system in essence made the students very lazy, and assisted in developing really bad habits such as depending on the system for things like lane changes, and turn setup when you really need to be aware of what's around you and where things are. That isn't what it is designed or should be used to, it is a last line of defense type warning system to avoid an unseen collision, not a system that replaces awareness, correct mirror usage, eye movement, or basic driving skill.
I do see the advantage, but I don't like how many driver's tend to drift toward depending on the system. I also didn't care for all the flashing lights driving at night, the side sensors were quite sensitive, and passing traffic would many times set them off, the right side being at the edge of your vision I found quite annoying.
Is it a good system, yes. Does it prevent accidents, I can't prove that, as the data from our testing showed opposite results. On the 100 test trucks we had, we actually saw a significant increase in the "preventable accident per 1 million mile" statistic. Keep in mind that 100 out of 17,000 trucks is a pretty small sampling, but regardless it was a major piece of data that prevented us from having it installed fleet wide.
It's a neat system, but it will never make a bad driver a good one.
My Opinion...
John
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