Fast-track smart lane safety plan
RSMART motorways kill – 14 people in the last year alone, to be precise. But can we live without them? Britain has too many cars and not enough roads.
No government is going to curb our desire for our own vehicles, or object to the taxes that they raise. Nor will they threaten the tens of thousands of jobs that car manufacturing, sales and servicing creates throughout the land.
Lack of budget, protection of the environment and painfully slow planning processes mean that instead of widening or building more motorway lanes, someone came up with the idea of replacing hard shoulders with an increasing number of these so-called smart lanes – lanes which will sometimes be open to traffic, sometimes not.
They are there, a bit like elasticated pants, to deal with times of excess. Not surprisingly, the result is an increased risk of a moving vehicle crashing into a stationary vehicle, which led to 38 deaths in the five years up to January 2020.
Smart lanes are a British idea. The vast majority of motorways in Europe have a permanent emergency lane. Motorways with sections where the hard shoulder has been removed include the M1, M4, M5, M6, M25 and M62.
The smart network stretches to about 500 miles in England, with plans to increase that by around 60 per cent over the next four years – that’s about 75 more miles of them every year.
That scares me. Not only for my life and the lives of any passengers I may have but for others on the road, depending on where and in what condition I have stopped my car.
I have seen smart areas where, if you come to a halt, there is literally nowhere to go, nowhere to get out of your car except into lanes of traffic.
Smart lanes may seem the perfect solution on some sort of computerised flowchart but in real life they are just plain stupid. And scary. If they are allowed to continue in their present form there will be more deaths.
Now an inquiry by the Transport Committee at Westminster is to consider how to improve their safety.They do that in the knowledge that these lanes will continue to kill.
I wish them well in their work but one of the areas that they have got to concentrate on is awareness for us drivers. Educate us about them.
They have only just been included in The Highway Code and driving tests.We now need to start transmitting public information films.
We need to know about them in advance, not suddenly realise we are on one when it could be too late.
Although I am no fan of traffic jams, I’d rather get to my destination late but in one piece.
ETALKING about her fitness regime, the slim, trim and stunning Tess Daly reveals that she owes her 10 out of 10 physique strictly to watching daytime telly every day. How come? Well, while most of us are in front of the telly with a biscuit and cup of tea, Tess is on her treadmill knocking out 5k for each session. All I have to say by way of admiration, Tess, is: “Keeeeep prancing!”
DANNII Minogue says mentoring The X Factor contestants made her want to have a baby for the first time.
The Australian, 49, said helping nervous wannabes brought out her maternal instincts and led eventually to the birth of son Ethan three years later, in 2010.
Kylie’s singer sister, who became a judge on the show in 2007, said: “That it was the first time, when I was mentoring, that I had any feeling of being maternal.
“I was so protective of anyone who was in my team, wanted to look after them, wanted the best for them.”
Speaking on theWhiteWine Question Time podcast Dannii added: “I felt like a mother when I pushed them out on stage. It basically set me up for the next part of my life.”
Dannii had Ethan with partner Kris Smith but they have now separated.