Figures obtained through a joint investigation between the BBC’s Panorama and ITV’s Good Morning Britain has revealed the hundreds of incidents when vital safety equipment was out of action.
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A traffic officer told the corporation’s flagship current affairs programme he no longer considered it safe.
National Highways, who are responsible for the operation of the smart motorways, has denied the claims.
Smart motorways are parts of roads which utilises technology to regulate the traffic in order to ease congestion issues.
So far, there are 193 miles of what is known as “all-lane-running” motorway, where the hard shoulder has been permanently removed in order to create an extra lane for traffic.
On another 63 miles the hard shoulder is sometimes open to traffic.
While on another 140 miles of smart motorway the hard shoulder has remained in place.
If a car does breakdown, radar and cameras are meant to spot them and warning signs are then supposed to close the affected lane.
National Highways has said the latest figures show that “smart motorways are our safest roads”.
Campaigners though have raised concerns that the removal of the hard shoulder could lead to drivers being put in danger.
They say cars can be left stranded in a stream of fast-flowing traffic and emergency vehicles could struggle to reach the incident.
In 2023, the government said it was halting the roll-out of more smart motorways over cost and safety concerns.
It is pumping £900million into technology to improve the safety of the network but it has no plans to put the hard shoulder back.
An FOI request showed that between June 2022 and February 2024 there were 397 incidents when smart motorways lost power, making it difficult to detect when a vehicle had broken down.
Those outages sometimes lasted for several days.
In July 2023, there were no signs, signals, camera or radar at junction 18 on the M6 for five days.
In September the same year at junction 22 on the M62 there were no signs, signals or CCTV for five days.
While there were no signs, signals, sensors or CCTV for three and a half days at junction 6 on the M5 in December 2023.
In the six months up to February this year, there were a massive 174 power outages, nearly one every day.
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The longest was at junction 14 on the M4 when there were no signals or sensors operating for 11 days.
The president of the motoring organisation The AA Edmund King said smart motorways become very dangerous without the technology or a hard shoulder.
He said: “If you haven’t got that technology, it’s not even a basic motorway because you haven’t got the hard shoulder.
‘PLAYING RUSSIAN ROULETTE’
“It means that you’re playing Russian roulette with people’s lives.”
National Highways has said that if hard shoulders were reinstated this would increase congestion and there were well-rehearsed contingency plans to deal with power outages.
However, power failures are not the only issue.
In 2022, there were 2,331 faults on the radar system which is designed to pick up stationary vehicles, according to the National Highways’ own figures.
The average length of fault lasted more than five days.
A National Highways traffic officer who works on smart motorways, and who wished to remain anonymous, told Panorama he no longer trusted the radar as he had seen it fail too many times.
He said: “Sometimes it’s faulty. Sometimes they’re repairing something and they’ll turn it off. I don’t always know it’s off.”
National Highways says the radar detects 89 per cent of stopped vehicles, indicating that one in 10 cars are not spotted.
Since the introduction of smart motorways in 2010 at least 79 people have been killed on them.
Over the past five years, seven coroners have called for them to be made safer.
The latest figures from National Highways show that if you break down on a smart motorway which doesn’t have a hard shoulder you are three times more likely to be killed or seriously injured than one with a hard shoulder.
‘ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS’
Safety campaigner Claire Mercer, whose husband Jason died on an all-lane-running section of the M1 in 2019, wants to see the return of the hard shoulder.
She says worried insiders at the National Highways regularly email her who want her to warn the public about dangerous faults and outages, a situation she says is “absolutely ridiculous”.
She told GMB: “I think the situation has actually got a lot worse since that data was released. The actual situation is a lot, lot worse.
“Those are the figures that are released but what is actually going on? That’s just terrifying enough.
“Half the equipment wasn’t even installed when my husband was killed and the other half wasn’t working.
“It just needs stopping now and it would be so quick and simple.
“All they need to do is flick a switch and turn the first lane off and we’ve got our hard shoulder back.”
Ana Borges suffered life-changing injuries after she was in a car crash on a smart motorway section on the M1 while she was driving to work.
She told ITV’s breakfast show if there had been a hard shoulder she could have stopped safely, her punctured tyre could have been replaced and she could have carried on to work and she wouldn’t have been hit by a lorry from behind.
What is a smart motorway?
There are three types of smart motorway in the UK – all lane running (ARL), controlled, and dynamic hard shoulder.
ARL are sections of motorway that do not have a hard shoulder.
They were introduced in 2014 with a view to controlling traffic flow and easing congestion.
Around 10 per cent of Britain’s motorways is made up of them.
Instead they use specially designed Emergency Refuge Areas for motorists who get into trouble.
Controlled sections of motorway use technology to manage the flow of traffic during busy times.
Operators can vary the speed limit – with lit signs on overhead gantries – with the aim of reducing the frustrating stop-start driving conditions that often occur on normal roads.
They also activate warning signs – to alert you to traffic jams and hazards up ahead – and close lanes to allow emergency vehicles through.
Variable speed limits are enforced with automatic cameras – which run 24 hours a day, even when the limit is 70mph.
Smart motorways can also increase capacity of the road by opening up the hard shoulder at busy times.
These dynamic hard shoulder sections are operated by Highways England, a government-owned company.
It says congestion on the motorway and major road network in England costs an estimated £2billion every year, with 25 per cent of this resulting from incidents.
The government promised as part of its improvement programme in 2020 to create more emergency refuges – safety laybys that motorists can use if they are in trouble.
But of the 150 that are meant to be built by next year, so far only 13 have been completed.
Another 34 refuges are currently being constructed, National Highways say.
Andrew Page-Dove, the National Highways operational control director, said action was being taken to “close the gap between how drivers feel and what the safety statistics show”.
Along with more emergency areas, this would also include education campaigns and improving the resilience of technology systems.
He said: “Safety is our highest priority and our motorways are statistically some of the safest in the world, but there is still work to do as every death is a tragedy and every serious injury a life changed.
“We need to help everyone feel confident when using smart motorways.
“They were introduced to provide extra capacity on some of our busiest and most congested sections of motorway, and the latest data shows that, overall, in terms of serious or fatal casualties, smart motorways are our safest roads.
“We are taking action to close the gap between how drivers feel and what the safety statistics show by increasing the number of emergency areas, delivering education campaigns, and improving the resilience of our operational technology systems.”
A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “While smart motorways are statistically among the safety roads on our network, we recognise the need for the public to feel safe when driving and have cancelled plans for all new smart motorway schemes.
“We are also investing £900 million to make improvements on existing smart motorways, including building more emergency areas on these roads.”
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