It hasn’t made visibility of the back end any better now they are no longer a requirement, that bright yellow inside the red border fitted low down on the rear would be picked up brightly by even dipped headlights in murky conditions, i bet a lot of drivers of all sort of vehicle owe their continued good health to those long vehicle boards, the red reflective strip now used isn’t a patch.
Place i work still have proper boards specified on new tanks though without the wording, the workshop started to remove them at MOT time, i spoke to our TM soon as i got my trailer back, he had me go down the workshops and have the mountings and new full size reflective boards refitted, workshop now leave them in place an apply a new one if they’re getting a bit dull or scraped.
Like a lot of things, not everything new is an improvement.