M5 J4A - J6 Smart Motorway

[JamesA44]

The VMSs were all blank last Thursday...

Meaning for the first time in 17 months you could do J4a-J6 at NSL

[Jeni]

They haven't yet repainted the freeflow lane at J5 for the NB onslip, rather annoying!

[JamesA44]

Does anybody know why there is a lane closure and a 50 limit back, so soon after this opening?

With the change in road markings to take 2 lanes off onto the M42, this only leaves one lane for traffic continuing on the M5 - with inevitable lengthy queues regularly.

There are some permanent-looking barriers, Free Recovery signs and average speed cameras, but I've seen absolutely nothing going on.

I find it suspicious that the lane closure ends right after the M42 diverge (although the 50 limit carries on almost to J4) ... surely they wouldn't/couldn't pretend that there are roadworks just to encourage people to use the alternative route to the M6?

[Jeni]

See here

[Bendo]

Screencap from a vid i saw on Facebook. Broken down car no lane closure and the clowns happily sat off in an active lane.

How long until HE have questions to answer about the inevitable serious collisions that will end up happening. The inquest into the death of Anthony Marston seems to have delayed significantly following the lorry drivers conviction. I wonder why that is.

[DB617]

Surely the ALR schemes use something similar to MIDAS - if a vehicle suddenly stops passing over the counters would it not be wise to flag an alert for attention at the control centre? Or maybe it's not THAT 'smart'. But I've always wondered if fatalities resulting from control centre omissions or mistakes would leave them liable. At this point I'm turning around to hoping they ARE found liable if God forbid it ever happens - they really do make managing the motorway look hard.

[Bendo]

I would have thought that whilst MIDAS can detect. Multiple vehicles showing down a single stopping vehicle is probably not going to be detected so if it relatively free flowing when you stop, you are at the mercy of being seen by the camera operator. Not somewhere I'd want to be especially if I'm having to extract a toddler from the offside door when there is armco right upto the edge of L1. In that instance they have been lucky to stop where there is a bit of room to pull over to the side.

What possess someone to sit roadside of the barrier though other than plain stupidity is beyond me.

[DB617]

It seems to me like a critical flaw in ALR that will be exposed very publicly after there are fatalities attributed to it. How a system that removes the safety feature that is hard shoulders and replaces them wholesale with a completely human factors based 'safety' system is a mystery to me.

[SteveA30]

Usually the causes of accidents is never reported, as the inquiry may be weeks later, by which time the media has moved on. I've been wondering why there have been no reports of ALR breakdown accidents, where the hard shoulder was. It is either
1 There haven't been any.
2 There have but, the cause, (rear end collision on the former hard shoulder) has gone unreported.