Borough motorist says M4 feels less safe as a smart motorway
A BOROUGH driver is concerned about the safety of the M4 smart motorway project, after a near miss last week.
David Gregory was driving home from work on Tuesday, November 9, when he saw brake lights building in the inside lane.
He was heading southbound from Slough, and a car had stopped half a mile from the exit slip road at junction 10.
“I saw the lane begin to lengthen for the exit, so I moved into the new inside lane,” Mr Gregory said. “I didn’t see that there was a vehicle stopped.”
As he passed the broken down car, Mr Gregory’s dashcam footage showed that the driver and passengers had climbed out of the car and over the barrier to stand next to the car with its hazard lights flashing.
Mr Gregory said that there was no warning by the motorway’s electronic signs of a breakdown ahead.
Dash-cam footage showed that the first sign displaying a red cross to mark a lane closure came after the broken down vehicle and not before.
A spokesperson for National Highways said that signs were changed within three minutes of the broken down car being picked up on CCTV, and that this happened eight seconds after Mr Gregory had driven past an earlier gantry.
It means that he was one of several drivers not alerted to the breakdown.
Mr Gregory said that he is concerned because this could have caused a pile-up.
“How many cars passed that point at 60mph in eight seconds?” he questioned. “And how many of those could have been involved in a crash?”
The National Highways spokesperson said that stopped vehicle detection is currently being installed on this stretch of the M4, and should be finished by the end of the month for junctions 8/9 to 12.
“This will reduce the time taken to activate signs and signals to around 20 seconds,” they said.
“We have removed the cones and barriers to open four lanes of traffic at 60mph between Maidenhead and Reading while the final parts of new technology installed as part of the upgrade are tested and commissioned.
“While this may appear fully open, it is part of this phased
approach. We open all of our motorway upgrades in a phased way to ensure that they are fully tested and operational before they go live, and that there is a smooth handover from our roadworks teams to our on- and off-road traffic officers.
“During the commissioning phase, besides the reduced speed limit, there is full CCTV monitoring and free vehicle recovery in place.”
Mr Gregory said that until the motorway is completed with stopped vehicle detection, a hard shoulder should be open.
“The car didn’t pull onto the hard shoulder because there wasn’t one,” he said. “Until it is a smart motorway with all of the protections, you need to keep a hard shoulder.”
He added: “After 35 years of driving, I cannot see how this is
a positive step. It feels less safe. It sounds like we just need the hard shoulder back.”
Mr Gregory said that it was the first breakdown he has seen on a smart motorway.
“It was eye-opening,” he said. “I’m right to be cautious on that road — the dark feels more unsafe than in the daytime.
“Coming back on a dark motorway frightens the hell out of me.
“There’s no road lighting. Cars are changing lanes with headlights in your wingmirror. It’s a very disorientating and concerning environment.”
He added that refuges are too small for drivers to enter and exit safely.
“That morning on my journey into Slough, there was a motorcyclist sat at the end tip of the refuge, and they pulled straight out.
“You’ve got to take a run up, adjust your speed, and pull on. But the lay-bys aren’t big enough.
“It’s almost impossible to get up to speed and rejoin at the same speed as the traffic.”
Nationally, smart motorways have been place under heavy scrutiny over safety concerns about refuges.
A transport committee report from MPs called for some smart motorway projects to be paused, including 15 miles of the M4 between junctions 3 and 8/9.
This is because they have emergency refuges up to 1.5 miles apart, which is farther than the one-mile safety guidance made by transport secretary Grant Shapps.
National reports show that there are more than 80 miles of smart motorway across the country have refuges spaced up to 1.5 miles apart.
Mr Shapps will respond to the report in the new year, but National Highways said that the sections in question were designed before Mr Shapps’s review, and prior to his safety guidance being published.
A resolution to this could be building more refuges along the routes, National Highways has suggested.