The regulator, the Office of Rail and Road (ORR), said all the available data was used in the “stocktake” of the Department for Transport (DfT) report, published in March last year.
However, the ORR pointedly noted that “there is a limited amount of data available”, given that only 29 miles of motorways in England with the hard shoulder removed have five years' worth of safety figures.
The ORR made a series of recommendations to National Highways, the government-owned company responsible for motorways and major A-roads in England, which was still known as Highways England when the review was commissioned in March 2021.
Transport secretary Grant Shapps commissioned the ORR's independent review of safety data for the controversial roads, following a Sunday Times analysis which suggested that in 2019 alone 14 people were killed on motorways where the hard shoulder was either permanently removed or being temporarily used as a live running lane.
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