What’s smart about being a motorway SITTING DUCK?

As fears grow over Smart Motorways that can leave stranded drivers at risk, more and more are asking...

When Claire Mercer heard on the radio reports about a horrific threecar crash on the M1, her thoughts immediately turned to her husband Jason.

Just 15 minutes earlier, they’d had breakfast together. The building firm contracts manager had only just kissed her goodbye, driving off in his new Ford Focus company car. Jason, 44, would always let his wife know he’d safely arrived for work, but as the minutes ticked by Claire heard nothing.

With a knot of fear in her stomach, she scoured the online news reports, knowing he’d joined the motorway near the crash site shortly before it happened.

Panic rising, Claire urgently tried to contact Jason, asking: ‘Are you ok? I’ve heard there’s a bad crash’ — but her increasingly frantic messages and calls went unanswered.

With no word for hours, she first phoned her husband’s employers, who also hadn’t heard from him, and then her brother, who worked at the local hospital, begging him to check A&e. Finally, fearing the worst, she called the police and gave them her husband’s car registration number.

By the time Mrs Mercer looked out of her window later that afternoon to see two police officers walking to their door in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, she already knew, she says that something was wrong.

‘I kept asking them, “Is he alive?”, and they wouldn’t tell me on the doorstep,’ says Claire. ‘Then, when they told me he was dead, I just couldn’t accept it. I still can’t bear the thought of him never coming home.’

Jason and another driver, Alexandru Mergeanu, 22, were both killed at around 8.15 am on June 7 after pulling over following a minor collision on the northbound M1.

The hard shoulder on this so-called ‘smart motorway’ had been turned into a fourth lane to ease congestion, so they tucked their cars as close as they could to the barrier to exchange insurance details.

But with no layby to pull into, a lorry hit both vehicles, killing the two men — the third such incident on the M1 in ten months.

‘Jason and Alexandru’s deaths prove these motorways are anything but smart,’ says Mrs Mercer, as she struggles to hold back tears.

‘Two people died that day. Two families have been utterly devastated because the hard shoulder had been turned into a live lane. It’s that simple.

‘Before my husband was killed, I’d only vaguely heard about smart motorways. now I know more than I could ever want to.

‘Jason was killed just a few hundred metres after the hard shoulder disappeared on the M1. he was legally obliged to stop after a minor collision but he paid for doing the right thing, with his life.’

Today, Mrs Mercer’s loss is all the more acute knowing her husband of almost ten years could still be alive if the hard shoulder hadn’t been turned into a running lane.

She is now taking on highways england, threatening legal action and battling to find out the truth about smart motorways, which road safety campaigners argue have turned drivers into ‘sitting ducks’.

First introduced on a stretch of the M42 in 2006, the term ‘smart motorway’ was used in 2013 to describe a range of different designs of ‘actively controlled motorway’, where computers monitored traffic congestion and incidents in real time and control centres changed speed limits and road signs accordingly.

hailed as the solution to Britain’s motorway congestion, the scheme was designed to add more than 4,000 miles of extra capacity.

DIVIDED into three categories, the first grade of ‘controlled motorways’ operates with multiple lanes, variable speed limits and a hard shoulder for use only in emergencies.

The second, ‘ hard Shoulder Running’, allows variable speed limits and opens the hard shoulder at busy times with overhead signs alerting drivers to when they can use it as a lane.

The third, ‘All Lanes Running’, or ALR, has been the standard for all new smart motorway schemes since 2013, with no hard shoulder

and just emergency Refuge Areas (eFAs) every mile or so.

They have been introduced on sections of the M1, M6, M3, M4, M5 and M25 and highways england plans to double the total length of smart motorways from 416 miles to 788 by 2025.

Around 135 miles of that total is ALR — the most controversial — with a further 225 miles planned in the next six years.

When all is running well, the absence of the hard shoulder eases congestion, but trouble comes when a car breaks down or is involved in a collision. To solve this problem, highways england introduced emergency refuge areas — laybys originally spaced 2.5 km apart, until road safety traffic groups, such as the AA, successfully campaigned for greater numbers and closer to each other. Today, they are around 1.6 km apart.

on its website, highways england advises motorists, in the event of a problem, to try to exit the smart section of motorway, or drive to the next eFA and call for assistance. Failing that, they should park as close as possible to the barrier and leave the vehicle if it is safe, standing away from the car behind the barrier.

If it is not safe to leave the car, the website advises drivers to stay in the vehicle with their seat belt and hazard lights on, and, if you own a mobile, to dial 999.

According to highways england, one in ten deaths occur on the hard shoulder, usually when stationary vehicles are hit from behind. Chief executive Jim o’Sullivan has insisted that the refuge areas ‘are safer than the hard shoulder’.

Motorists are reassured that computers constantly monitor the motorways, automatically changing the speed limit or closing lanes with a red X on overhead gantries to protect motorists in the event of an incident and to allow emergency services access.

Breakdowns are picked up either by CCTv cameras or the more sophisticated Stationary vehicle detection systems (Sdv) which rely on roadside radar.

But given the recent spate of deaths, the AA is calling for the proposed expansion of smart motorways to be halted.

Certainly, there are frightening similarities between the collision which killed Mr Mercer and Mr Mergeanu and the two previous fatal incidents on the all lanes running sections of the M1. In all three cases, none was able to reach an emergency layby.

In September last year, a 62-yearold woman was killed after getting out of a broken- down nissan Qashqai on the M1 near Sheffield.

Then, in March, retired engineer derek Jacobs, 83, was killed when a coach hit his volkswagen Crafter after the pensioner stopped with a puncture on the northbound M1 in derbyshire.

knowing he was not safe, Mr Jacobs had got out of his van but was crushed against a crash barrier by his own vehicle. his family told the Mail in March that it took emergency services more than an hour to get to him because there was no hard shoulder.

CREWS could only reach him by shutting down the motorway and driving down in the opposite direction. Mr Jacobs, who suffered chest injuries, died at the scene.

his widow Sally, 81, said at the time: ‘how many more deaths is it going to take? It’s scandalous. It makes it worse knowing it took an hour to get to him. Could they have saved his life?’

Mrs Mercer has spent the past three months poring over files of Commons Transport Select Committee reports and statistics and is now calling for a judicial review.

She reportedly wants to prove that highways england’s decision to remove the hard shoulder ‘without providing adequate and efficient protection’ is a breach of the company’s duty to make motorways safer.

‘highways england needs to explain whether the back- up systems y failed to save Jason and a Alexandru. At best, it could be negligent. At worst, it may verge on criminal,’ Mrs Mercer said.

‘There was also no emergency refuge area nearby. Why not? If they take away the hard shoulder, they must have systems in place that protect motorists. These tragic deaths show those systems have failed repeatedly.’

She claimed police told her the lane in which her husband and Mr Mergeanu had stopped had remained open until after they were killed.

Mrs Mercer has also highlighted a report in highways magazine last week which revealed that highways england’s control centres can take an average of 17 minutes to spot a broken down vehicle on ALR motorways when Sdv systems are not in place.

A freedom of information request by the AA revealed that only around 18 per cent of 135.1 miles of ALR smart motorway are covered by Svd, which uses radar to identify stationary vehicles in real time.

In these ALR schemes without Svd, it took more than 15 minutes for 36 per cent of live lane breakdowns to be discovered by CCTv. The longest response time was more than an hour.

The AA’s edmund king said: ‘This highlights why growing numbers of the public are justified in their safety concerns over the removal of the hard shoulder. Ultimately, until you are found by the camera you are a sitting duck.

‘Taking three minutes to set the red X [on overhead gantries] is too long for someone in a broken-down

vehicle to wait. Expecting someone to wait in a lifethreatening position for 20 minutes is inexcusable.’

But Highways England (formerly the Highways Agency) claims that smart motorways are no less safe than a conventional three-lane motorway with a hard shoulder.

Based on its own data analysis, the agency claims smart motorways have improved journey reliability by 22 per cent, reduced personal injury accidents by half, and where accidents did occur, severity was much lower with fewer people seriously injured.

Edmund King, president of the AA, agrees that emergency refuge areas could be safer than the hard shoulder ‘if people could get to them’. But often they can’t.

He also warned that they were potentially more dangerous to exit, as it was difficult to get up speed to re-join lane traffic. Some AA members have described them as ‘death zones’.

HIGHWAYS England has declined to comment on Mr Mercer’s death because a police investigation is ongoing. A 39-year-old man is on bail on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving.

But a spokesman insisted that safety is their ‘ top priority’.

‘The evidence shows that where all lane running has been introduced, there have been fewer collisions and congestion has reduced.’

Last week, a Highways England spokesman issued this response to questions about stopped vehicle detection systems. ‘The evidence is clear that smart motorways improve safety, with or without automatic stopped vehicle detection systems.’

Those words are of no comfort to Mrs Mercer, who is determined not to let the death of her ‘strong, funny and amazing’ husband to become another forgotten statistic.

‘Jason had been driving safely for 27 years, and he did everything right that day,’ she says.

‘Like everyone else, we’d sometimes sit in jams for hours thinking, “Some poor soul won’t be going home tonight”, never thinking that one day the person not coming home would be Jason.’