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E+T Magazine

The government has been urged to reintroduce hard shoulders on the UK’s smart motorways to reduce the danger to motorists.

The RAC’s head of policy, Simon Williams, said that either smart motorways should be converted to ‘dynamic’ ones, where the hard shoulder is only opened to traffic during busy periods, or a permanent hard shoulder on those roads should be installed.

“In either case, queue-busting technology, such as variable speed limits, could remain to help ensure traffic flows as smoothly as possible,” he added.

Last year, 14 planned smart motorways were removed from the government’s road-building plans in England due to concerns over safety and costs.

Currently, there are 375 miles of smart motorway, making up 10% of England’s motorway network. But as well as scrapping a planned expansion of the project, 150 emergency stopping places were retrofitted to existing smart motorways.

“While heralded as a cost-effective way of increasing capacity on some of our busier roads, a colossal...

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Parents

  • 100% agree with the RAC on this one! Visiting my parents involves a drive around the smart motorway section of the M25 mentioned in the article and it's a nightmare. What invariably happens is that no one drives in the inside lane anyway just in case they come up against a broken down vehicle so there's no benefit whatsoever!  I've seen it myself when a car two cars in front of me came to a stop in the running lane. I didn't see it as I was behind a large Range Rover who swerved suddenly leaving me coming up rapidly behind a stationary vehicle at 70mph. Not a pleasant experience and could have been catastrophic if I hadn't been able to move over to the next lane pretty sharpish.... Flushed

Comment

  • 100% agree with the RAC on this one! Visiting my parents involves a drive around the smart motorway section of the M25 mentioned in the article and it's a nightmare. What invariably happens is that no one drives in the inside lane anyway just in case they come up against a broken down vehicle so there's no benefit whatsoever!  I've seen it myself when a car two cars in front of me came to a stop in the running lane. I didn't see it as I was behind a large Range Rover who swerved suddenly leaving me coming up rapidly behind a stationary vehicle at 70mph. Not a pleasant experience and could have been catastrophic if I hadn't been able to move over to the next lane pretty sharpish.... Flushed

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