AIBU to be shocked about so-called "smart" motorways?

[Bigfatchips]

Trust me, it takes a lot to shock me. Last time I was seriously shocked was when we had to go through an automated check-in for our luggage with Ryan Air last summer. No human contact whatsoever - just loaded our baggage onto the plane via an automated terminal - but that's another story.

Today I drove on the M3 for the first time for about 6 months. There have been roadworks and 50mph limits on the Surrey end of this motorway for at least 3 years, with signs up saying "creating a new smart motorway" at the roadside.

So, am on this new smart motorway today and I realise that what's changed is that it's gone from 3 lanes plus hard shoulder to 4 lanes with NO HARD SHOULDER for miles and miles.

AIBU to think this is completely fucking insane? Where are you supposed to go if you break down or have an emergency inside the car? What if your car literally grinds to a halt in the inside lane? How insanely dangerous is that?! Cars driving up behind you at 70mph - how are they supposed to avoid smashing in to the back of you?

If anyone can reassure me that this is all fine then I would be grateful. Otherwise I'm seriously considering avoiding the M3 altogether even though I need to use it fairly often.

Ultimately this is the illustration of why itsna terrible idea to have money as the driver for every decision.

Oh and I have heard everything now. Blame the immigrants for smart motorways. Ffs.

Blind "It's one of the many benefits of year on year high net immigration OP"

And increasing population among non immigrants. Check your facts.

Yes OP I too am horrified by no hard shoulder.

I'm not sure how to do a link from my phone, but this is absolutely horrific (please be warned it is horrible to listen to, although the family are thankfully ok).

www.channel4.com/news/familys-motorway-horror

I just can't understand how these smart motorways can be justified?!

For those who feel the same way, please sign:

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/206799

They were introduced as part the of the quantative easing that followed the banking crisis in 2008. I worked at the Highways Agency at the time and all the engineers were horrified.

Due to immigration, my arse.

It's a case of government hoping people are so thick that by calling the motorways "smart" people will believe it is not dangerous to have no hard shoulder. And when that doesn't work, pointing out that other roads are also dangerous. It is symptomatic of overcrowded roads, lack of space and a government which doesn't believe in taxing, spending or reacting to any problem in a way that inspires the belief they know and understand the impact of what they are doing, though.

They were introduced by the last Labour government.

I hate it too.

That stretch of the M6 is notoriously bad anyway, why on earth make it more dangerous.
My dsis lives here and I was worried enough about her and her family using this stretch anyway, but now.... I just wish they'd move.

I hate them. They absolutely terrify me.

As for increasing capacity, the only thing that I've seen happen on the ones I've been on is that lorries are hogging 3 lanes rather than two, trying to overtake each other at 50 mph.

Self serve at an airport is horrible when it's 5am and your eyes are hanging out your head because you haven't slept in about 20 hrs. Couldn't for the life of me figure how the tag worked and had to seek someone out to do it for me then the desk handler was angling for me to ditch my flight as they had overbooked she wasn't pleased when I said I was getting on that plane, otherwise on a good day they are great. imagine smart motorways are the same great until human or mechanical error occurs.

The M42 has had this system for YEARS.
It is weird when you first see it, but it does work, honest!
The hard shoulder is only used sometimes and the speed is reduced when it is open. there are laybys to crawl in to in case of emergency.
It is different, so it unsettles you, but the traffic flow is MUCH better.
I get local traffic reports, and it isn't the 'SMART' motorway that has the most accidents around here, by a long chalk.

When my fan belt went and my engine died immediately I would have been dead without a hard shoulder. I agree with you - it's very, very dangerous.

The advice has always been don't stay in a broken down vehicle. The family should have all got out of the van and waited behind the barriers. Then they would have been fine.

needle
Wasn't the average time without somebody crashing into you on the hard shoulder, 30 seconds or something like this.
i can remember it being quite short and wondering why we didn't have public information films about it.

Neddle, just tryong to picture getting elderly parents out of the car in that situation.

Def prefer hard shoulder.

Emergency secures comments in the channel 4 piece are key.

Ah so there are a few reasons. But UK population growth is definitely one of them. (Not 'blaming immigrants' btw, blaming high net immigration which is the government's responsibility.) Report from the RAC here: www.racfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/car-ownership-in-great-britain-leibling-171008-report.pdf

And a graph in the Guardian here www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/25/uk-population-at-record-high-with-net-migration-the-biggest-driver
showing that yes, immigration accounted for over 50% of the population increase one year and that doesn't include children born to immigrants that year so the effect of immigration is in fact higher.

So anyone who thinks immigration has no impact on the number of cars on the road is mistaken, unless they want to argue immigrants don't use cars or something.

I would have thought the 'women going out to work' factor and divorce would have levelled out some time ago though prepared to be corrected on that.

I broke down on the M42 once back It has tonnes of regular lay-bys that you can safely limp to. They are good. It's these long stretches of 'smart' motorway with no pull-ins at all that are more dangerous imo. Or have regular lay-bys been created?

In theory the motorway is closely monitored and if you're stopped in a lane it will soon be signalled as closed to traffic. In practice ... yeah, it could easily go wrong.

There's the refuges too, but there's a good chance of a breakdown preventing you reaching one.

Basically it's trying to do road widening on the cheap. And the British government doing half-arse jobs on the cheap should surprise nobody, at least not when it comes to roads.

The variable speed limits part can improve flow by keeping traffic moving steadily rather than being stop-start; on the times I've come to a dead stop on the motorway it's almost always been in areas without variable speed limits. Then again, the limits can just be used as an excuse to turn on the speed cameras.

The accident in the metro article, though tragic, did not occur on a 'smart motorway' - it occurred in a stretch of roadworks. Road widening would also involve roadworks and likely hard shoulder closures.

The thing with variable speed limits and lane closures is that I have never been through one that makes any sense - only ever when the cause of the change in speed limit or lane closure has disappeared and most cars have ceased to pay them any attention, which in itself is a potential cause of accidents, if the signs are so slow to react that people think the information is bollocks and ignore it.

Not all "smart" motorways seem to work in exactly the same way, anyway, and there are more and more stretches of more and more motorways being converted in not quite the same ways. The disruption caused by the roadworks is certainly aggravating and the result at the end not an improvement on the stretches I've had to suffer through.

As for the "it was the Labour government that started it," there is no obligation to expand a not great idea into a massive project all over the country and to change occasional use of the hard shoulder into motorways with no hard shoulder at all. It's the most recent conversions that have been the most dangerous and utterly, utterly crap, so I lay the blame for the poor, shoddy, cheapskate conversions squarely at the door of the Tories on this one.

It does concern me how many people I see who haven’t got out of their cars when stopped on the hard shoulder.