The government has announced it is to stop the rollout of smart motorways for two years, as it reacts to concerns over their safety.
The use of the hard shoulder at peak times to increase capacity for vehicles has proved controversial, following multiple fatal and serious accidents on smart motorways introduced to date.
However, the government is only stopping the commissioning of further upgrades. Any hard shoulders that have been used for all-lane running motorways will not be reinstated. And ongoing work on 100 miles of motorway to switch to all-lane running will continue.
Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, said no new smart motorways would be commissioned until five years of safety data had been collected on stretches introduced before 2020.
At present, refuge areas allowing cars to leave the road in an emergency are sited up to 1.6 miles apart. If a vehicle breaks down, variable speed limits are used to keep traffic flowing and lanes are closed, indicated to road users by a red X on gantries. Critics say the approach can leave vehicles stranded and vulnerable to being struck.
A highly critical report from the Commons transport select committee in November accused ministers and civil servants of ignoring major concerns over the suitability of smart motorways.
And last January, a Sheffield coroner declared them a major contributing factor in a fatal accident on the M1 that left two men dead in South Yorkshire. Coroner David Urpeth said smart motorways without a proper hard shoulder carry an “ongoing risk of future deaths”.
Referring to the completion of ongoing upgrades, Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, told The Times: “What I can assure people is that all these stretches will open with the full stopped vehicle detection in place. They’ll also have all the other bells and whistles that are designed to ensure that we don’t have what was happening all too often, which was smart motorways that weren’t really smart.”
Many owners of classic cars, which often were built to outdated safety standards and may be more likely to break down, say they avoid driving on smart motorways altogether because being stranded in a live lane is too great a risk to their safety and the safety of other road users.
According to Highways England, there are approximately 400 miles of smart motorway in action. About 200 miles lack a permanent hard shoulder, and 63 miles use the hard shoulder as a live running lane when congestion builds.
To improve safety of existing or smart motorways under construction, 150 new emergency refuge areas will be added, doubling the number of available places to stop out of the path of traffic and reducing the distance between them to 0.75 miles.
The RAC said many drivers “have deeply held concerns over the safety of motorways where the hard shoulder is permanently removed” and added it was pleased the government had paused further upgrades to motorways. When the RAC polled drivers in the UK about smart motorways, 76 per cent of over-65s and 64 per cent of 45 to 64-year olds said the concept is unsafe.
Edmund King, the president of the AA, said: “At last, we have a transport secretary who has made progress and taken a positive and pragmatic approach. He has accepted many of the measures we have been calling for and our important demand that emergency refuge areas should be no more than three quarters of a mile apart.”
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Smart motorways has NEVER been a smart idea, and should NEVER have been instigated. They can only possibly be safe at anything above walking pace ! There are far too many distractions placed in the modern drivers way to prevent accidental continuous use of a closed lane. Add to that drivers from abroad that cannot read English and its a soup for fatalities. The refuge points are too far apart anyway – anybody who has suffered a puncture or other breakdown on a quick road of any sort will testify to how scary and dangerous it can be. We probably wouldn’t need extra capacity if Lane 2 hoggers were fined, or better still publicly flogged perhaps ! The fact that people are cosseted in modern vehicles leads to complacency in the first place, whereas those who have to DRIVE their cars are compelled by its frailties to concentrate properly. Smart motorways should be instantly reverted to hard shoulder running.
Must tell my car to only break down and stop at a so called refuge they should be called “KILLING ZONE”
The technology is available to detect broken down vehicles almost immediately, unfortunately hardly any of the existing smart motorways are equipped with the technology so it relies on someone spotting that a vehicle has stopped, and the delay until then
Also there re lots of cases of drivers ignoring the closed lane signs, so I dont see how the So called safe motorways can ever be such a thing.
I agree that more attention needs to be paid to the misuse of lanes, be it hogging a lane when they should have over ove, and anyone weaving in and out of lanes to pass a car in front should be banned for life.
“The fact that people are cosseted in modern vehicles leads to complacency in the first place, whereas those who have to DRIVE their cars are compelled by its frailties to concentrate properly.”
Excellently put, couldn’t agree more.
How can Grant Shapps make decisions, about what should be done on Motorways? He should be made to work on the Motorways like I was for 14 and half years then he could make decisions on what is SAFE and what isn’t safe, instead he sits at his desk and says this and that should be done to make STUPID MISTAKES ABOUT SMART MOTORWAYS