Drivers face ‘smart motorway roulette’

MOTORISTS are facing ‘smart motorway roulette’ because vital warning signs fail to work up to 10 per cent of the time, the Mail can reveal today.

All-lane running motorways are designed to reduce congestion by axing hard shoulders. If a collision or breakdown takes place, staff are supposed to detect it and close the lane – with the help of CCTV cameras and radar.

Around 1,000 of these incidents are picked up each month. However electronic signs, which warn of lane closures ahead, were hit by technical problems 10 per cent of the time in September. Red ‘X’ signs that inform drivers of speed limit changes or closed lanes were out of use for 3 per cent of the time.

Claire Mercer, whose husband was killed on a smart motorway in 2019, said: ‘With so many of these signs failing to work, drivers are facing a smart motorway roulette.’ Last month the Daily Mail revealed that systems monitoring 280 miles of road stopped working for seven hours.

The figures for failing signs were obtained by Labour MP Sarah Champion, who has been campaigning to ban smart motorways.

She said: ‘It is shocking that these systems are so unreliable, yet the Department for Transport and National Highways continue to hide behind technology as an excuse for placing motorists’ lives at risk.’

National Highways insists that motorists have several opportunities to see that a road is closed through other functioning signs on nearby gantries – even if one red ‘X’ or text sign is not working.

It is also understood the figures reflect outages for signs on the entire smart motorway network and not just all-lane running routes.