Drivers ‘at risk for too long’

Police monitor motorways and respond when a vehicle breaks down. But the MPs said: “Drivers and passengers who stop or breakdown in a live lane are put at risk for too long, because the technology used to respond to these incidents is not as effective and reliable as it should be.”

The Government has announced plans to improve safety, including introducing radar technology to detect stopped vehicles. But the MPs said the roll-out of new all-running schemes should be stopped until it was clear how much these new measures helped. They said: “The Government and National Highways should pause the rollout of new all-lane running schemes until five years of safety and economic data is available for every all-lane running scheme introduced before 2020 and the implementation of the safety improvements in the Government’s action plan has been independently evaluated.”

Chair of the Transport Committee, Huw Merriman MP, said: “Only when these safety measures have been brought in, when enough time has been afforded to assess the safety of Smart Motorways over a longer period and when the Office of Rail and Road, as the independent road safety regulator, have been given powers to evaluate it, should we move to roll-out more miles of Smart Motorway.”

At the same time, the MPs raised concerns about existing dynamic hard shoulder motorways. They said: “Dynamic hard shoulder motorways apparently confuse drivers, because the hard shoulder is used unpredictably to tackle congestion. A more consistent approach, where the hard shoulder is used at known times, could clarify the situation for drivers.”