‘My husband was killed on a smart motorway’
‘Smart’ motorways cost lives, says widow Claire Mercer, who is calling for them to be banned
Ifirst met Jason around 13 years ago, when he approached me in the pub. We quickly discovered we had many shared interests, including our love of music, and before too long we were dating, and married after three years – nothing fancy, just a ceremony at the local register office, followed by a party for friends and family.
We’d decided against starting a family – the two of us were enough for each other – but Jason promised me that one day we’d get a dog. It never crossed my mind how short my time with Jason would be.
On June 7 last year, he set off for work. He had recently started a new job as a contract manager, which involved occasional travel to York and Huddersfield. I don’t drive, so normally Jason would drop me at my office in Sheffield before continuing to his own. But I had the day off, so he headed straight for the M1 to begin the journey to York.
He didn’t know the section he was on had been turned into a “smart” motorway some years earlier, meaning there was no hard shoulder. Neither of us had even heard the term before, though if you watched Monday night’s Panorama on BBC One, tellingly called Britain’s Killer Motorways?, you’ll know how dangerous they can be.
Somewhere on the outskirts of Sheffield, not far from the Meadowhall shopping centre, Jason had a minor bump with another vehicle. They had just passed a sign saying “no hard shoulder for 4 miles” and so he and the other driver, a 22-year-old man called Alexandru Murgeanu, had no choice but to pull in by the side of the road. A barrier prevented them from walking any distance from their cars and there was no banking on which to stand, just a 15ft drop on to another road below. So they stood by the vehicles in the road and began exchanging details for insurance purposes. The lane they were standing in – which had formerly been the hard shoulder – remained open, but other cars managed to avoid them.
Six minutes later, one driver didn’t see them.
Back home, it didn’t take me long to realise something was amiss. Jason would usually message me a lot while at work. But today he wasn’t replying to my messages, so I called to check all was OK. No answer. I called his firm, who hadn’t heard from him either.
Meanwhile, I was listening to the radio as I went about the house, and dominating the local news headlines was a car crash that had left the area between Rotherham and Sheffield gridlocked. Gradually it started to sink in, and I was sure Jason was involved.
I phoned the police and said, “I think my husband was in that crash.” The woman on the other end of the line asked for his registration plate and then said: “I’ll have to call you back.”
A few minutes later, police were outside my door. “Is he alive?” I begged. They told me he was not. I’d said goodbye to him at 8am and by 8.15am he was dead. It made no sense.
I didn’t even cry much to start with. I kept repeating, “It’s not real.” It couldn’t be. But it gradually sank in that it was. Alexandru also lost his life.
Over the next few weeks, I kept hearing people remark: “Those smart motorways are to blame.” I started looking into it and found out what they were – an initiative to convert some hard shoulders to normal lanes, first trialled in 2007 and then rolled out more widely, in an effort to combat congestion.
I discovered many people were opposed to them, but there was no big campaign group to fight them. Overnight, my sister and I started one, setting up a website and Facebook page, and strangers got in contact immediately. Some had also lost loved ones in smart motorway incidents. We even formed a message group called Broken Hearts Club, to give each other mutual support.
I don’t want compensation. I want to get smart motorways banned. I’ve now hired a solicitor to pursue a judicial review, which I hope will result in these dangerous schemes being stopped. This week I also reported Highways England to the police, accusing them of corporate manslaughter.
I welcome the fact that a report out this week by MPS has found the “shocking and careless” introduction of the scheme has cost lives. I’ll continue to wait for real action.
I’ve now got the dog we’d always wanted, but I miss Jason every single day. He was a big noisy fellow, and you knew when he was around. It feels very quiet without him.
As told to Rosa Silverman
For further information, visit smartmotorwayskill.co.uk