How the wheels fall off those ‘safety’ claims

From the moment the smart-motorway experiment was launched, experts raised doubts about their safety.

Yet despite at least 53 deaths between 2015-2019, ministers and road bosses have continued to claim they are safe.

Earlier this year, as part of a Daily mail investigation, I worked undercover in National Highways’ busiest control centre in Hertfordshire for six weeks, and saw at first hand the serious human and technological failings that beset this scheme.

Now, as MPS call for a halt to the building of more smart motorways, here’s why ministers’ safety claims just don’t add up...

CLAIM 1: CASUALTIES ARE LESS LIKELY

In September, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps insisted: ‘Fatal casualties are less likely on all-lane running motorways [in which the hard shoulder has been permanently converted into a traffic lane] than on conventional ones.’

other ministers and National Highways bosses have also trotted out this line to defend the controversial roads, but it relies on highly selective data.

It is true that between 2015 and 2019, conventional motorways had higher death rates per hundred million vehicle miles travelled compared to ‘all-lane running’ (ALR) motorways.

In 2015, however, there were only 29 miles of smart motorways in England (58 if you include both sides of the dual carriageway) and in 2019, this had expanded to 141 (or 282 if you count both sides of the motorway).

And, crucially, the more the smart motorway experiment was expanded, the more the dangers appeared to mount. In 2018, the ‘live lane fatality rate’ was more than a third higher on ALR motorways than on conventional ones, while in 2019 the rate was eight per cent higher.

There were also higher rates of serious injuries over the four years on smart motorways.

CLAIM 2: LANES CLOSED WITHIN MINUTES

roads minister Baroness Vere of Norbiton told Mps in June that control-room operators can close lanes within ‘minutes’ after a breakdown to protect drivers.

‘They will set the signs and they will be able to set the pan, tilt and zoom camera on to your car,’ she insisted.

But our undercover probe revealed the software used to do so is beset with failures.

I witnessed the technology crash several times, leaving helpless National Highways staff unable to set vital signals that can save drivers’ and passengers’ lives.

During one outage, which lasted more than 30 minutes, an operator commented: ‘We’ve got no signals, you’re all going to die … whichever God you believe in, start praying now.’

Last month, National Highways confirmed that two-thirds of vital signs used to warn drivers of lane closures and accidents had been broken on a stretch of smart motorway with no hard shoulder.

A string of National Highways whistleblowers have come forward since our investigation claiming that even the newest software being rolled out by the company regularly crashes and must be rebooted, leaving large areas without signals for hours at a time.

CLAIM 3: FULL CCTV COVERAGE

Nick Harris, Ceo of National Highways, claimed in June 2021 that smart motorways ‘actually have more than 100 per cent [CCTV] coverage’.

But a Daily mail audit of more than 800 CCTV cameras on Alr motorways on the National Highways system on September 17 revealed that more than one in ten was either broken, misted or pointing the wrong way. This was the case for almost 50 per cent of the cameras on one smart-motorway section of the m25.

Internal emails seen by the mail also exposed bosses admitting that CCTV ‘blackspots’ existed on the m25.

In just one of six control rooms, staff reported almost two CCTV and technological failures per day – preventing them from setting lane closures and finding broken-down cars.

CLAIM 4: WORKING TECHNOLOGY

Former National Highways Ceo Jim o’Sullivan told the transport select committee that the Stopped Vehicle Detection (SVD) that recognises when vehicles have broken down on the motorway uses ‘ground-breaking technology’.

He added that trials on the m25 ‘proved that it works’.

mr o’Sullivan, who said National Highways had been ‘perfecting the design of smart motorways for ten or 15 years’, added: ‘Getting it right and making sure it works ... is very important to us.’

But the expensive radar system that should alert the smart-motorway control room to breakdowns within 20 seconds has given a host of false warnings – while risking fatal accidents by missing stranded cars.

Staff say the system – due to be expanded along the entire smart motorway network at a cost of £122million – is impossible to rely on.

It currently ‘protects’ 24 miles on the m25 around London and 13 miles on the m23 in Surrey.

Staff view alerts from the system, which makes a ‘groaning’ sound when it is triggered, as ‘low priority’ because it goes off so often. Slow-moving traffic and even road signs set it off.