Scrap ‘smart’ routes

IN A graphic and deeply moving protest over the everyday carnage caused by ‘smart’ motorways, campaigners carried 38 coffins to Parliament yesterday – one for every person killed on these death-trap roads between 2014 and 2019.

The toll is now more than 50. Yet still the highways agency continues with this insane and deadly experiment. With breathtaking insouciance, it says these roads are ‘the safest in the country’, a claim shattered by a recent Daily Mail investigation.

Today, the Commons transport committee delivers its own scathing report and calls on the Government to pause the rollout of further smart motorways until five years of safety information is available and vital improvements are made and independently evaluated.

The Mail welcomes the move, but it must be taken further. If it’s unsafe to roll out new stretches of road, then it’s clearly unsafe to continue operating those stretches which already exist.

They must be abandoned forthwith, and every mile of hard shoulder restored. Otherwise the coffins will keep mounting.