Britain’s smart motorways are being reviewed by the government following alarm over 38 deaths that have been associated with them. This has thrown doubt over plans to roll out an additional 300 miles of smart motorways across England by 2025.
On the RAC site a smart motorway is described “as section of a motorway that uses traffic management methods to increase capacity and reduce congestion in particularly busy areas.” Of those methods, the most controversial is “using the hard shoulder as a running lane” so as to improve the flow of traffic.
But a BBC Panorama programme last week claimed that in the last five years, 38 people had been killed by traffic driving down this hard shoulder/running lane. The programme also asserts that in the five years before one section of the M25 was converted into smart motorway, there were just 72 near misses, compared to 1,485 in the five years after conversion. According to the Mail Online, Police Federation chief John Apter has called for the £6 billion project to be abandoned because of these figures.
Judging by Twitter a lot of people agree with him.
So basically, Smart Motorways exist because we need more lanes to get people places faster.
Or how about we all leave earlier, drive slower, and arrive at our destinations alive?!
This whole problem caused by our impulse society #panorama
— Andy Dutton (@dutts_87) January 27, 2020
Enough is enough. Excuse my language but stop fucking about with people’s lives. Near misses increased 20-fold on one section of the M25. Hello?! Alarm bells!!? Not to mention a warning sign on the same stretch out of action for 336 days!?? Enough. https://t.co/fYc5pH9Fnk
— Tom Lynch (@BahnstormerTom) January 26, 2020
A police van has managed to turn up, but all these vehicles are still driving on those lanes. A prime example of the #SmartMotorways being an utter failure. pic.twitter.com/2xCu5pdh9n
— Abinayan (@_abinayan) January 27, 2020
https://twitter.com/SHannamSwain/status/1221902120565137408
This is what happens when you scrap the emergency lane, in the name of a so called smart motorway. Absolute madness. pic.twitter.com/faafdoFq04
— Anthony Simpson (@antvoyager) January 28, 2020
But a media statement by Highways England on the gov.uk argues that the hard shoulder has never been safe anyway. “More than a hundred people are killed or injured on the hard shoulder every year, and people stopping on them unnecessarily is an issue.” In fact according to Highways England, smart motorways have reduced casualty rates “by more than 25 per cent.”
Advice and guidance on the Highways England site reassures readers that a combination of emergency bays, electronic speed signs, and the Big Red X alert whenever there is a situation that requires you not use the left hand lane, means that the system is very safe.
However the evidence to the contrary highlighted in the Panorama report and elsewhere means that it’s time for a safety review to find out what the truth is. So for the moment no more smart motorways will be opened. This means work will cease on several major schemes that were due to finish this year, including stretches of the M20 in Kent, the M62 in Greater Manchester, the M23 near Gatwick Airport and the M6 near Coventry.