Motorway madness

MY THANKS to Guy Walters for his excellent article on the dangers of so-called smart motorways.

This week I witnessed the lunacy of doing d away with the hard shoulder. While travelling in the middle lane of the M3, the cars in front braked sharply when vehicles tried to push their way out of the inside lane.

The chaos was caused by a Land Rover R at 90 degrees across the inside lane, la with its nose buried in the crash barrier as there was no hard shoulder. How are emergency vehicles expected to reach accidents quickly if there is no hard shoulder?

MIKE WOOD, address supplied. I HAVE spent decades driving up and down the M1 and M25 with few concerns about how I would deal with a breakdown because I knew there was a hard shoulder.

But with the advent of smart motorways, I am nervous about another vehicle ploughing into the back of my car if I break down in the inside lane. The best to be hoped for is that this ill-advised project is stopped, though I doubt that will happen after all the money that’s been invested.

TINA HAWES, Northampton. TRAVELLING to our caravan in Devon on the M42 and M5, I can’t begin to count the number of hours we have spent in nose-to-tail, stopstart traffic while the smart motorway system was being installed.

My heart has gone out to the occupants of cars at a standstill, with hazard lights flashing, stuck in a busy traffic lane that used to be the hard shoulder.

As for emergency vehicles, I have seen an ambulance with emergency lights flashing, but unable to make any progress due to the hard shoulder of the M1 being used as a traffic lane during roadworks. This is the situation we can expect on smart motorways and it could cost lives.

The Government must think again about smart motorways — or will it wait until a family in a broken-down car is wiped out by an HGV?

G. EAGLESFIELD, Burton-on-Trent, Staffs.