Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been urged to reinstate the hard shoulder on so-called smart motorways.
Around 10 percent of England’s motorway network is made up of smart motorways, which were developed to increase capacity without having to add extra traffic lanes.
The first stretch of all-lane running (ALR) smart motorway—which uses the hard shoulder as a permanent live traffic lane—opened on the M25 in Hertfordshire 10 years ago.
But they have proved very unpopular and there is evidence they have led to more fatal incidents as broken down vehicles are left stranded in the inside lane.
The RAC’s head of policy, Simon Williams, said, “There is a real irony when it comes to talking about cost pressures in relation to these distinctly unpopular types of motorway.”
“While heralded as a cost-effective way of increasing capacity on some of our busier roads, a colossal amount of public money has since gone into trying to make them safer, for instance by installing radar-based technology to detect stricken vehicles more quickly, plus the creation of additional emergency refuge areas,” he added.
Mr. Williams said: “This cash needn’t have been spent. The government ploughed on with building all-lane running motorways, regardless of concerns expressed by drivers, the RAC, and even the Transport Committee.”
On June 7, 2019, Jason Mercer, 44, and Alexandru Murgeanu, 22, were killed by a lorry on the M1 motorway near Sheffield. The pair were standing by their stationary vehicles after a minor shunt.
Coroner Warned of ‘Risk of Future Deaths’ in 2021
After an inquest in 2021, South Yorkshire Coroner David Urpeth said smart motorways possessed “an ongoing risk of future deaths.”The Department for Transport has spent more than £1.5 billion digging up hundreds of miles of traditional motorway, burying sensors under the road and relaying them, removing the hard shoulder, and replacing it with occasional laybys.
The idea was that if a car, lorry, or coach breaks down in a lane, or there is an accident, the overhead gantry signs will show a red X and motorists will know not to drive in that lane, thus avoiding a pile-up.
But it has not worked and a National Highways report published in December said smart motorways without a hard shoulder were three times more dangerous to break down on than those with an emergency lane.
The number of people killed or seriously injured after a stopped vehicle was hit by a moving vehicle was 0.21 per 100 million vehicle miles on ALR smart motorways between 2017 and 2021, compared with 0.10 on conventional motorways.
He admitted only 13 of 150 ERAs had been installed since the prime minister put up the funding to retrofit them to smart motorways.
A Department for Transport spokesman said, “While smart motorways are statistically among the safest roads on our network, we recognise the need for the public to feel safe when driving, and have cancelled plans for all new smart motorway schemes.”
“We are also investing £900 million to make improvements on existing smart motorways, including building more emergency areas on these roads,” he added.
