Smart motorways... utterly bonkers???

[Silvercatowner]

I get that smart motorways are meant to ease congestion, but surely there isn't the capacity to make them smart enough to actually be safe?? The refuges aren't close enough together, and I don't understand how the traffic will be that closely monitored to be able to close off a lane as soon as someone breaks down or has an accident. The whole thing is deeply scary...

Private eye has covered these. The official statistics are highly misleading and they are much more dangerous than they seem based on the figures. Well worth digging out the report, you can probably find it online.

I was going to post similar, pointythings... www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-56254169

What about dual carriageways then? Same 70 limit, no hard shoulder, tractors and other slow vehicles añd cross over points.

I've come to the conclusion the A1 is bonkers.

Some deaths due to smart motorways in/near Sheffield

instructed me to move my seat as far back and make sure my seat belt was on and be prepared for impact

Oh my good grief....

@pabloescobarselasticband

My job involves a lot of driving. My instructors ( particular type of driving that requires extra instruction and reassessment every year) all say exactly the same, that they are an absolute death trap!

Id say that's due to people being to busy with other things e g distracted with phones ect, I'm guessing if all cars were automated the motorways would prove that it's driver error that's the risk factors.

The worst thing is the government have plans to roll out more smart motorways across the country so we won't be able to avoid them so easily.

I wish the newspapers would cover issues like this more frequently and hold the government to account instead of stupid Meghan and Harry stories and what Carrie Johnson is wearing.

@Monkeyrules

The worst thing is the government have plans to roll out more smart motorways across the country so we won't be able to avoid them so easily.

I wish the newspapers would cover issues like this more frequently and hold the government to account instead of stupid Meghan and Harry stories and what Carrie Johnson is wearing.

I wish the newspapers would cover issues like this more frequently and hold the government to account, on what points about smart motorways ? E.g. How drivers still use mobiles, drivers not focusing, ect those areas would be a good place to start.

You only have to look at YouTube, driver dash cams to see how inattentive some drivers are,

Hawkins are you suggesting that all the issues involving smart motorways are down to drivers not paying attention? Do you perchance work for the Highways Agency?

Are there any ways to avoid these smart motorways? We normally drive from Scotland to Devon for holidays and reading about these would make me so anxious to be on one

@pointythings

Hawkins are you suggesting that all the issues involving smart motorways are down to drivers not paying attention? Do you perchance work for the Highways Agency?

I'm not suggesting all errors, due to not have carried out detailed research on the issues, but as dash cams and people being caught using mobiles , ect are proven facts id start with those factors first before progressing onto the technical side of smart motorways

@jetadore

Wait till they bump the speed limit to 80 as well.

Unlikely

Going by the M4 in Wales it's more likely to reduced to 50 "to improve air quality"

@SylviasMotherSaid

Are there any ways to avoid these smart motorways? We normally drive from Scotland to Devon for holidays and reading about these would make me so anxious to be on one

I think you'll be ok for most of that journey - although there's likely to be a bit of a stretch on the M6 - when I went that way in 2019 there were miles of roadworks which I think were for a smart motorway. The M5 is ok though (I think) and I think once you get north of Preston there's no chance of any so it's the Preston to Birmingham stretch which may have parts especially closer to Birmingham that are "smart". There are ways to bypass but it does take a long time.

@SylviasMotherSaid

Are there any ways to avoid these smart motorways? We normally drive from Scotland to Devon for holidays and reading about these would make me so anxious to be on one

Long stretches of the M6 and M1 are SM now. There's no need to avoid them. Check your car before you go, leave safe space in front of you when driving and concentrate properly, is the best way to drive. Unless you think your car has a high chance of breaking down the risk is small.

They are terrifying.
Short termism / Money saving at its worst.

I'm not suggesting all errors, due to not have carried out detailed research on the issues, but as dash cams and people being caught using mobiles , ect are proven facts id start with those factors first before progressing onto the technical side of smart motorways

Except that those things have been around for longer than smart motorways, certainly in the case of handheld mobiles. So they do not in any way explain the increase in incidents and deaths over the past two years, during which considerable smart motorway expansion has happened. They also do not explain the length of time it takes for stranded motorists to be reached - 17 minutes.

You're being disingenuous. The government has presented its data to make it look as positive as it can - their methodology has been taken apart by a range of experts. Motoring organisations, the police and driving instructors are saying these on the cheap smart motorways are dangerous. I know experts aren't fashionable these days, but I'm going to go with their say-so.

Frankly dangerous. I was on the M1 last week, going south . There was serious congestion, speed signs going from 60 to 40, nothing on Google traffic. Turns out, they were slowing everyone down because, omg, junction for the M25 coming up. Even that wasn’t busy. This is a persistent issue around this stretch of the M1, they slow you down for every junction for no reason. It drives me mad.

The lack of hard shoulder has brought about crashes and deaths, I gather. Read that last week somewhere, probably another forum. It does seem mad not to have a hard shoulder: are you supposed to close a live lane if you break down? What if others don’t stop in time?

@pointythings

I'm not suggesting all errors, due to not have carried out detailed research on the issues, but as dash cams and people being caught using mobiles , ect are proven facts id start with those factors first before progressing onto the technical side of smart motorways

Except that those things have been around for longer than smart motorways, certainly in the case of handheld mobiles. So they do not in any way explain the increase in incidents and deaths over the past two years, during which considerable smart motorway expansion has happened. They also do not explain the length of time it takes for stranded motorists to be reached - 17 minutes.

You're being disingenuous. The government has presented its data to make it look as positive as it can - their methodology has been taken apart by a range of experts. Motoring organisations, the police and driving instructors are saying these on the cheap smart motorways are dangerous. I know experts aren't fashionable these days, but I'm going to go with their say-so.

Sometimes through you have to look at all considering factors, and the main one these days is , people's attention, you only have to look at how many drivers drive practically bumper to bumper even at high speed, it's like they don't consider if the car in front had to break ect instead , then you have phones, then you have other distractions or people going into auto pilot mode ect, that's where I'd begin with, then I'd look at the response times of breakdown services e.g. Was they located on other breakdowns, was they stuck in traffic else where and that deleyed the response, was there adequate coverage of recovery vehicles to cover any potential breakdowns ect.

Hate them, 2 separate stretches of the 2 motorways I use to get to work are currently being converted. The ones that I have used that are fully functional (some of the M6? near Birmingham and parts of the M60) aren’t any different in terms of jams/hold ups. They still happen regularly.

In fact, I work EOW, used to give a colleague a lift and every Saturday at about 6:15 we’d be on the M60 on the approach to the Trafford Centre. The signs would be flashing ‘Queue Caution’ and the signs set to 50 mph for no reason at all, we were one of about ten cars on the road. Every Saturday it was the same though.

James Delingpole wrote an article in ‘The Spectator’ about the time he broke down on one. He just managed to get himself out and onto the embankment. He says in the article, he dreads to think of he’d had children in car seats or an elderly/infirm person with him. He made the correct phone calls but still saw cars swerving around his. He was apparently in a spot not covered by cameras. No one came to him for over an hour; police apparently won’t attend unless there are injuries.

The AA will not attend breakdowns unless the lane has been closed as they say it is unsafe for their staff.

Nope they are fine. People who lack discipline on the Motorway are the issue.

Can't we have the gantries and signage and cameras etc but with hard shoulder or frequent refuges still in place?

Whatever the statistics, I don't feel safe on them and have reverted to A roads.

Thankfully I only go to London on the train.

@pointythings

It depends on the type of smart motorway and the picture is complex. Because the promised stopped vehicle detection systems were not universally installed (for cost reasons), the death rate on ALR (All Lane Running) smart motorways has risen markedly over the last 2 years as more stretches of motorway have been converted. ALR is favoured by the government because it is a cheap way of adding an extra lane - just convert the hard shoulder. However, the evidence is starting to show that without high quality systems in place to rapidly detect vehicles in trouble and dispatch aid, these motorways are more dangerous.

Flex running, where there is signage indicating which lanes are open and which are closed, has been shown to be very safe.

Given that we have a government that is all about cost and not at all about standards, I am not in favour of further expanding the smart motorways programme.

This!

I'm a confident driver but hate smart motorways and agree the issues are all about cost cutting.

I was driving on the M60 few weeks ago. No warnings on lane closures or anything. Broken down van suddenly turned up overlapping 2 lanes. Was absolute chaos

They'd just missed an emergency lay-by by about 1000 yards and clearly were unable to make it to the next one

And don’t get me started on the now 3 lanes of middle lane driving bad behaviour

Hawkins you're reaching now. All the factors you quote were in existence before smart motorways were brought in. So what the government did was to add another layer of risk on top of all those things, by not having the proposed frequency of refuges, by having ALR in places where it was not safe and by not having a fit for purpose alerts system because it would cost too much.

Changing human behaviour is incredibly difficult. Everyone knows that. Why then would you add a layer of additional risk on top of that? No, this was motorway capacity expansion on the cheap. Like this government does everything on the cheap. The cost is human life.