NOT SO SMART…
Goverment suspends smart motorways
Smart motorway rollout has been suspended, the transport secretary Grant Shapps has announced. Smart motorways aim to increase motorway capacity and reduce congestion by utilising the hard shoulder as a ‘live lane’ alongside the use of variable speed limits. If a vehicle breaks down on a smart motorway, and is not able to be driven to a refuge area, a control centre will spot the car and display a red ‘X’ above the lane to display it as closed and divert traffic around the broken down vehicle. However, it has emerged that it takes an average of 17 minutes to be spotted and a further 17 minutes to be rescued, leaving the car exposed.
The news comes after the Automobile Association announced that it would no longer stop on smart motorways, instead relying on Highways England to move broken down vehicles to refuge areas, and the revelation that 38 people have been killed on smart motorways in the past five years.
At the time of publication, nearly 32,000 people had signed a petition (tinyurl.com/
trezlyx) calling the government to ‘Bring back hard shoulders on motorways’ which states: ‘If you break down on a motorway with no hard shoulder, you are a sitting duck sat in a lane of live traffic travelling at speeds of a minimum 70mph.’
FBHVC Communications Director Wayne Scott told PC:
‘The FBHVC welcomes the government’s actions here to put these systems on hold while they review them, as safer roads are the priority for us all. We do not believe that a historic vehicle is any more likely to end up needing a hard shoulder than mainstream traffic, especially as the majority of historic vehicle drivers tend to avoid motorways where possible, but anything that makes our roads safer is to be supported.’
‘It takes up to 17 minutes to spot a broken down vehicle’