All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

[Bendo]

See my reply above.

I did, but it doesn't make sense as a policy, an unlit gantry, as far as I am aware, doesn't override the restrictions so all they are doing is causing confusion as to the limit which will result in some people sticking to the limit and some taking a chance. Probably less of an issue if the cones and TM is setup but restrictions, blank gantries then an end of restrictions, if that is policy suggests there is a lot more wrong with smart motorways than just lack of SVD. You need to add sheer incompetence to the list.

Nope. Doesn't make any sense to me as a driver either but I am re-assured that this is how it works. I am also 100% certain that a black gantry legally means that the motorway reverts to standard ie. 70mph and all lanes open. You do not have to wait for a NSL sign on a gantry.

As much as I've searched, I've not been able to find any ammendments to legislation to add a scenario other than display of a new limit or END signage. It is possible that I've just missed it though. As you are 100% certain, can you point to the ammended legislation to satisfy my curiosity and stop my current positon of "I'll speed up but back off at every camera"?

[Big L]

Don't the newest motorway speed cameras have a second set a short distance back to photograph, amongst other things, the speed limit showing on the gantry?

[XC70]

I did, but it doesn't make sense as a policy, an unlit gantry, as far as I am aware, doesn't override the restrictions so all they are doing is causing confusion as to the limit which will result in some people sticking to the limit and some taking a chance. Probably less of an issue if the cones and TM is setup but restrictions, blank gantries then an end of restrictions, if that is policy suggests there is a lot more wrong with smart motorways than just lack of SVD. You need to add sheer incompetence to the list.

Nope. Doesn't make any sense to me as a driver either but I am re-assured that this is how it works. I am also 100% certain that a black gantry legally means that the motorway reverts to standard ie. 70mph and all lanes open. You do not have to wait for a NSL sign on a gantry.

As much as I've searched, I've not been able to find any ammendments to legislation to add a scenario other than display of a new limit or END signage. It is possible that I've just missed it though. As you are 100% certain, can you point to the ammended legislation to satisfy my curiosity and stop my current positon of "I'll speed up but back off at every camera"?

I am certain I got it from here. Has been discussed a number of times. Besides the cameras are triggered by additional CCTV type cameras in front which read the limit then set the trigger point. No limit displayed, 70 limit enforced and no chance of prosecution for less than 70mph. In theory a faulty matrix in one lane which has gone blank has the same effect but you would need to be pretty cavalier with your licence to bomb down a blank lane 3 with 50mph displayed in 1,2 and 4....

Perhaps someone else on here can point us the regs on blank gantries.

[Bendo]

A couple of examples of Managed / smart mororway legislation:-

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/2397/made

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2011 ... ion/3/made

"(4) For the purposes of this regulation a speed limit sign is to be taken as not indicating any speed limit if, ten seconds before the vehicle passed it, the sign had indicated no speed limit or that the national speed limit was in force. "

It isn't clear to me, it could be read either way, although https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/201 ... 717_en.pdf sort of backs up that unlit - NSL, however doesn't explicitly state that it overrides the previous limit.

Does an unlit MS4 count as a speed limit sign, it was probably easier to argue the case for an unlit gantry over the lane in earlier schemes.

[jackal]

The BBC claim that 'The figure of 38 deaths over five years on the smart motorway network is significant because it only makes up a small proportion of the total miles of road' (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51236375). How significant?

There were 107 deaths on all motorways in 2018, 99 in 2017, 93 in 2016, 108 in 2015. (In case you're wondering, there were 158 deaths in the pre-smart motorway nirvana of 2008.)

2019 figures are not yet available, but on the basis of the mean of the other four years there would be 509 deaths over the five year period. 38/509=0.075. So around 7.5% of motorway deaths are smart motorway deaths and the BBC's claim of 'significance' is a non sequitur - smart motorways account for a small proportion of mileage and deaths.

Now I expect when you dig into the data, there are far more deaths on the average mile of smart motorway. But that's obviously because they are on average much busier, and busier roads have higher risks.

This is why whole-network figures are not that useful. The most useful comparisons IMO are the same road before and after it became smart motorway. And as HE have shown, such comparison shows smart motorways in a favourable light.

I expect this explains the critics' shift towards more malleable metrics such as 'near misses', the absurdity of which others have already pointed out. If a near miss happens on an old motorway and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

[Chris5156]

They are NOT MEANINGLESS and only a fool who doesn't understand statistics would say so.

There is no need to call me a fool.

I don't think you have actually addressed the point I am making, which is that the single statistic (72 near misses before the road was converted, 1,485 in the same length of time afterwards) is impossible to sensibly interpret without understanding whether near misses were being reported with the same consistency both before and after the road was converted to Smart Motorway. We do not know that. And without knowing that, any conclusion drawn from that statistic is a conclusion drawn from incomplete evidence.

[Bendo]

The BBC claim that 'The figure of 38 deaths over five years on the smart motorway network is significant because it only makes up a small proportion of the total miles of road' (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51236375). How significant?

There appears to be currently ~230 miles of smart motorway. At the end of 2017, there was ~100 miles of ALR smart motorway.

[Bryn666]

I'm intrigued as to how they measure that. A near miss, by definition, is a non-hit. Who reports that? Maybe more people do when it's a smart motorway because they think the signs should be warning them. I find it hard to believe that any section of the M25 more than about 6 yards long had only 72 near misses in 5 years – that's barely more than one a month. That number just isn't credible.

Or have we converted accidents into near-misses? How many of those 1485 would have been hits without the smart technology?

Indeed, I find those figures very questionable for these reasons and others. It’s impossible to know, from the information given, what is being discussed and whether it’s a meaningful comparison.

On an ordinary motorway, there is not the surveillance or manpower to monitor the road and everything that happens on it in as much detail. How much of the difference in figures is down to the fact that near misses are being recorded for intensively-monitored and scrutinised Smart Motorways but not on other roads?

What is the difference in actual collisions and other incidents, and the severity of those incidents? Is it higher or lower? Are we seeing a situation where there are more near misses but fewer incidents? More near misses and more incidents but the incidents are generally less serious? More near misses and collisions that are generally more likely to result in death or serious injury? We just don’t know.

I’m not dismissing any of the concerns in this thread, but that statistic is all shock value and zero meaning.

They are NOT MEANINGLESS and only a fool who doesn't understand statistics would say so.

Working in the railway industry where we also have 'near misses' and 'incidents' means I am very well aware of the terms 'near miss' and 'incident' - you don't need to have some sort of ever present independent arbiter to draw up said statistics!

A near miss is an event which someone believes could have caused death or injury REGARDLESS of the mode of transport.

Best practice says that a high number of near misses indicates you have a problem - and rather than pretending there isn't, were these statistics being presented to anyone other than the road lobby then there would be demands for immediate action by the safety regulators!

Its pretty obvious that if you are safely on the hard shoulder then because that is not a live traffic lane then the number of near misses will be less. This would be similar to railway staff working inside a line blockage but with adjacent lines open - statistically you are a lot less likely to have a 'near miss incident' because vehicles should not enter the place where you are standing*.

On the other hand if you don't have a hard shoulder then its more akin to working on an open railway where you have 20 seconds to get clear - in such situations the risk of having a near miss shoots up dramatically. The same is true old a motorist braking down in a live lane - because they are not in a piece of road blocked to other road traffic then you are 100 % relying on other road users to take timely avoiding action.

Again a railway that has a sparse train service lowers the risk - just as a D2 A road like the A24 will have a vastly lower risk than the ALR M25 simply because of traffic volumes so all this nonsense about 'well we don't have hard shoulders of A roads' is bogus. The more traffic (and the more live lanes a road has the more traffic it will carry) the grater the chance of an incident or near miss occurring

Just as a train driver may make an official record of a 'near miss' so too might be a breakdown recovery driver, a Highways Agency traffic officer and theses should be no less believed.

Of course just as members of the public can report perceived near misses at level crossings, so might ordinary motorists - if they have felt the need to take evasive action because they came across a stationary vehicle in a live traffic lane, but the official signage had not been changed to warn of the obstruction then they may well phone the highways agency to report a near miss.

Ultimately the ONLY way an ALR motorway can be as safe as a conventional one is where you have the signs backed up by radar so they can react instantly combined with frequent laybys. The fact that neither of these have been implemented for cost cutting reasons by HE / DfT stinks - as any sane statistician would have easily been able to prove the number of near misses / incidents would go up significantly without them. Simply relying on a limited number human television watchers to spot things is NOT ON!

I do accept however that an ALR motorway PROPERLY kitted out with the above is probably safer than a traditional motorway.


* Having recently been the victim of a signaller removing the line blockage prematurely and running a train through my still blocked line as far as I was concerned does show its not foolproof - but its a lot safer than open line working.
Naturally if you increase opportunities for vehicles to get off the live lanes through increased refuges (i.e. making them more like the discontinuous hard shoulders we used to get on widening schemes) and install radar technology so the signs can react instantly then you go a long way to lowering risk factors - and thus near misses.

Apart from it IS entirely meaningless because in road safety engineering there is NO CONCEPT OF A NEAR MISS. Likewise, a vehicle can stray from its path, plenty of HGV drivers wander into hard shoulders and kill people - unless a train derails you know exactly where it will be going. The two cannot be compared at all.

If we treated 'near misses' like the railways or aviation does, the motorway network would be closed down overnight and never reopened. It's the trade off for having thousands of vehicles use these networks daily.

Trying to prevent a near miss where the result is nothing happens on the road network is like trying to shovel snow in a blizzard. It's one of the reasons, rightly or wrongly, road safety budgets can only be justified where there is a proven collision history involving injury. There simply are not enough resources to deal with them otherwise.

I'll be first in line to slag off Highways England, but these scare headlines are being driven by people with agendas.

[Phil]

They are NOT MEANINGLESS and only a fool who doesn't understand statistics would say so.

There is no need to call me a fool.

I don't think you have actually addressed the point I am making, which is that the single statistic (72 near misses before the road was converted, 1,485 in the same length of time afterwards) is impossible to sensibly interpret without understanding whether near misses were being reported with the same consistency both before and after the road was converted to Smart Motorway. We do not know that. And without knowing that, any conclusion drawn from that statistic is a conclusion drawn from incomplete evidence.

Perhaps you would like to inform the RAIB, AAIB, HSE and MAIB they have got their approaches wrong then.

For a near miss event to be officially record then it will have been judged a event with the potential to injury or kill. All the above organisations have a 'zero tolerance' approach and would be extremely alarmed at such a large jump in reported incidents - not to seek ways of dismissing them. Please remember that this information has not come from a BBC reporter making things up - its come from a FOI request into Highways England own records.

Dismissing the numbers is a bit like going round and saying it no problem crime statistics are going up because people are reporting it more. Yes the grater reporting may be good in itself - but what that means is efforts need to be redoubled to tackle it - not prevaricate or dismiss the statistics as not being meaningful as you are trying to do.

Yes, I accept that if traffic volumes go but all else stays the same, up then based on the law of averages you would expect the number of near misses to go up and as such there is less of a concern were the jump in near misses to be small - but the key thing is the two will correlate to a degree and a statistical relationship be drawn. In the case of the M25 that is not the case, traffic levels have not jumped upwards to that extent which would explain an increase in near miss incidents - the large jump can ONLY be explained by the fact that a penny pinching version of ALR has been introduced.

Had things like layby provision been maintained at 600m and radar detection been employed to detect stationary vehicles from the outset then I am sure the number of misses recorded in the post ALR setup would be significantly less.

[Bryn666]

They are NOT MEANINGLESS and only a fool who doesn't understand statistics would say so.

There is no need to call me a fool.

I don't think you have actually addressed the point I am making, which is that the single statistic (72 near misses before the road was converted, 1,485 in the same length of time afterwards) is impossible to sensibly interpret without understanding whether near misses were being reported with the same consistency both before and after the road was converted to Smart Motorway. We do not know that. And without knowing that, any conclusion drawn from that statistic is a conclusion drawn from incomplete evidence.

Perhaps you would like to inform the RAIB, AAIB, HSE and MAIB they have got their approaches wrong then.

For a near miss event to be officially record then it will have been judged a event with the potential to injury or kill. All the above organisations have a 'zero tolerance' approach and would be extremely alarmed at such a large jump in reported incidents - not to seek ways of dismissing them. Please remember that this information has not come from a BBC reporter making things up - its come from a FOI request into Highways England own records.

Dismissing the numbers is a bit like going round and saying it no problem crime statistics are going up because people are reporting it more. Yes the grater reporting may be good in itself - but what that means is efforts need to be redoubled to tackle it - not prevaricate or dismiss the statistics as not being meaningful as you are trying to do.

Yes, I accept that if traffic volumes go but all else stays the same, up then based on the law of averages you would expect the number of near misses to go up and as such there is less of a concern were the jump in near misses to be small - but the key thing is the two will correlate to a degree and a statistical relationship be drawn. In the case of the M25 that is not the case, traffic levels have not jumped upwards to that extent which would explain an increase in near miss incidents - the large jump can ONLY be explained by the fact that a penny pinching version of ALR has been introduced.

Had things like layby provision been maintained at 600m and radar detection been employed to detect stationary vehicles from the outset then I am sure the number of misses recorded in the post ALR setup would be significantly less.

Perhaps you could enlighten us as to what parameters HE are using to define 'near miss' as I have already said, there is no concept of one in GG 119, so there certainly won't have been any raised in Stage 4 safety audits. That means they've invented a definition on the fly and no-one in the road safety industry will be aware of it?

Seems like unreliable evidence to me then. There must be thousands of 'near misses' daily on the motorway network - aborted lane changes are a near miss, someone travelling at less than a two second gap is a near miss, someone driving one handed is a near miss, all of these could potentially result in a collision.

Like I said, if we applied the RAIB definitions of near misses to roads, they'd be shut down overnight and never reopen. Is that what the naysayers want?

[Phil]

Indeed, I find those figures very questionable for these reasons and others. It’s impossible to know, from the information given, what is being discussed and whether it’s a meaningful comparison.

On an ordinary motorway, there is not the surveillance or manpower to monitor the road and everything that happens on it in as much detail. How much of the difference in figures is down to the fact that near misses are being recorded for intensively-monitored and scrutinised Smart Motorways but not on other roads?

What is the difference in actual collisions and other incidents, and the severity of those incidents? Is it higher or lower? Are we seeing a situation where there are more near misses but fewer incidents? More near misses and more incidents but the incidents are generally less serious? More near misses and collisions that are generally more likely to result in death or serious injury? We just don’t know.

I’m not dismissing any of the concerns in this thread, but that statistic is all shock value and zero meaning.

They are NOT MEANINGLESS and only a fool who doesn't understand statistics would say so.

Working in the railway industry where we also have 'near misses' and 'incidents' means I am very well aware of the terms 'near miss' and 'incident' - you don't need to have some sort of ever present independent arbiter to draw up said statistics!

A near miss is an event which someone believes could have caused death or injury REGARDLESS of the mode of transport.

Best practice says that a high number of near misses indicates you have a problem - and rather than pretending there isn't, were these statistics being presented to anyone other than the road lobby then there would be demands for immediate action by the safety regulators!

Its pretty obvious that if you are safely on the hard shoulder then because that is not a live traffic lane then the number of near misses will be less. This would be similar to railway staff working inside a line blockage but with adjacent lines open - statistically you are a lot less likely to have a 'near miss incident' because vehicles should not enter the place where you are standing*.

On the other hand if you don't have a hard shoulder then its more akin to working on an open railway where you have 20 seconds to get clear - in such situations the risk of having a near miss shoots up dramatically. The same is true old a motorist braking down in a live lane - because they are not in a piece of road blocked to other road traffic then you are 100 % relying on other road users to take timely avoiding action.

Again a railway that has a sparse train service lowers the risk - just as a D2 A road like the A24 will have a vastly lower risk than the ALR M25 simply because of traffic volumes so all this nonsense about 'well we don't have hard shoulders of A roads' is bogus. The more traffic (and the more live lanes a road has the more traffic it will carry) the grater the chance of an incident or near miss occurring

Just as a train driver may make an official record of a 'near miss' so too might be a breakdown recovery driver, a Highways Agency traffic officer and theses should be no less believed.

Of course just as members of the public can report perceived near misses at level crossings, so might ordinary motorists - if they have felt the need to take evasive action because they came across a stationary vehicle in a live traffic lane, but the official signage had not been changed to warn of the obstruction then they may well phone the highways agency to report a near miss.

Ultimately the ONLY way an ALR motorway can be as safe as a conventional one is where you have the signs backed up by radar so they can react instantly combined with frequent laybys. The fact that neither of these have been implemented for cost cutting reasons by HE / DfT stinks - as any sane statistician would have easily been able to prove the number of near misses / incidents would go up significantly without them. Simply relying on a limited number human television watchers to spot things is NOT ON!

I do accept however that an ALR motorway PROPERLY kitted out with the above is probably safer than a traditional motorway.


* Having recently been the victim of a signaller removing the line blockage prematurely and running a train through my still blocked line as far as I was concerned does show its not foolproof - but its a lot safer than open line working.
Naturally if you increase opportunities for vehicles to get off the live lanes through increased refuges (i.e. making them more like the discontinuous hard shoulders we used to get on widening schemes) and install radar technology so the signs can react instantly then you go a long way to lowering risk factors - and thus near misses.

Apart from it IS entirely meaningless because in road safety engineering there is NO CONCEPT OF A NEAR MISS. Likewise, a vehicle can stray from its path, plenty of HGV drivers wander into hard shoulders and kill people - unless a train derails you know exactly where it will be going. The two cannot be compared at all.

If we treated 'near misses' like the railways or aviation does, the motorway network would be closed down overnight and never reopened. It's the trade off for having thousands of vehicles use these networks daily.

Trying to prevent a near miss where the result is nothing happens on the road network is like trying to shovel snow in a blizzard. It's one of the reasons, rightly or wrongly, road safety budgets can only be justified where there is a proven collision history involving injury. There simply are not enough resources to deal with them otherwise.

I'll be first in line to slag off Highways England, but these scare headlines are being driven by people with agendas.

Please show me where in the highway code it allows drivers of vehicles to enter a the hard shoulder in situations other than an emergency! Hard shoulders, while dangerous places are infinitely safer than the live running lane by virtue of that fact and no amount of bluster can deny that basic fact.

Yes we know that vehicles do occasionally enter the hard shoulder when they shouldn't - but in terms of the number of vehicles using any particular section of motorway the percentage of vehicles which do enter the hard shoulder is low and thus the number of incidents is also relatively low meaning the hard shoulder as a 'place of safety' (in relation to the live lanes) is still valid.

The garter the traffic volumes the grater the chance of a chicle developing a problem and stopping. Removal of the hard shoulder which would have previously been a safe place (simply by virtue of it not being a live traffic lane) greatly increases the number of incidents and near misses that occur.

This can of course be mitigated by:-

(i) the provision of frequent (every 600m or so) lay-bys to provide a hard shoulder-esque place for vehicles to come to rest outside a live traffic lane
AND
(ii) OBSTACLE DETECTION and signage that reacts QUICKLY to shut lanes if an obstruction is present thus creating a virtual hard shoulder for the vehicle to reside in

The problem with the section of the M25 mentioned in the report is both the above HAVE NOT BEEN DONE.

Lay-bys at 2km intervals and signage which requires human operators to spot a problem (currently its around 17 minutes IIRC) are not acceptable and will OBVIOUSLY create more near miss incidents.

THAT is why the statistics are as bad as they are - and no amount of bluster from road engineers should be allowed to disguise the fact that in many places ALR as implemented by Highways England has made safety WORSE - not better.

For the record I have no problem with a properly set up Smart motorway scheme - and DO agree that if done PROPERLY, a SMART motorway is actually going to be be safer and suffer from less incidents than a traditional motorway with hard shoulders. The problem precisely because I have yet to see a ALR scheme done Properly yet by Highways England - and until I do I will continue to maintain they are more dangerous - something the statistics the BBC have got hold of for one section of the M25 easily prove.

[Phil]

There is no need to call me a fool.

I don't think you have actually addressed the point I am making, which is that the single statistic (72 near misses before the road was converted, 1,485 in the same length of time afterwards) is impossible to sensibly interpret without understanding whether near misses were being reported with the same consistency both before and after the road was converted to Smart Motorway. We do not know that. And without knowing that, any conclusion drawn from that statistic is a conclusion drawn from incomplete evidence.

Perhaps you would like to inform the RAIB, AAIB, HSE and MAIB they have got their approaches wrong then.

For a near miss event to be officially record then it will have been judged a event with the potential to injury or kill. All the above organisations have a 'zero tolerance' approach and would be extremely alarmed at such a large jump in reported incidents - not to seek ways of dismissing them. Please remember that this information has not come from a BBC reporter making things up - its come from a FOI request into Highways England own records.

Dismissing the numbers is a bit like going round and saying it no problem crime statistics are going up because people are reporting it more. Yes the grater reporting may be good in itself - but what that means is efforts need to be redoubled to tackle it - not prevaricate or dismiss the statistics as not being meaningful as you are trying to do.

Yes, I accept that if traffic volumes go but all else stays the same, up then based on the law of averages you would expect the number of near misses to go up and as such there is less of a concern were the jump in near misses to be small - but the key thing is the two will correlate to a degree and a statistical relationship be drawn. In the case of the M25 that is not the case, traffic levels have not jumped upwards to that extent which would explain an increase in near miss incidents - the large jump can ONLY be explained by the fact that a penny pinching version of ALR has been introduced.

Had things like layby provision been maintained at 600m and radar detection been employed to detect stationary vehicles from the outset then I am sure the number of misses recorded in the post ALR setup would be significantly less.

Perhaps you could enlighten us as to what parameters HE are using to define 'near miss' as I have already said, there is no concept of one in GG 119, so there certainly won't have been any raised in Stage 4 safety audits. That means they've invented a definition on the fly and no-one in the road safety industry will be aware of it?

Seems like unreliable evidence to me then. There must be thousands of 'near misses' daily on the motorway network - aborted lane changes are a near miss, someone travelling at less than a two second gap is a near miss, someone driving one handed is a near miss, all of these could potentially result in a collision.

Like I said, if we applied the RAIB definitions of near misses to roads, they'd be shut down overnight and never reopen. Is that what the naysayers want?

And how many of those near misses caused by lane changes are logged by Highways England?

That is the critical point - we are not talking about random guesses or media anecdotes we are talking about incidents in Highways England control logs. Yes there may well be lots of near misses caused by poor driver behaviour on our roads every day - but in the main those will not be logged and kept in archives for people to study through freedom of information requests!

You can only react to what you have data about - and in this case we are talking about incidents on a supposedly high tech motorway which is constantly monitored by professional staff.

While I admit I have never actually visited the Motorway control for the section of the M25 concerned, I am given to understand they keep a control log to record any events which occur on shift.

Even before the motorway was given the SMART treatment, the control room was pretty advanced in terms of the number of cameras and other aids the controllers had at their disposal.

Thus the near misses they recorded are likely to be either things operators have seen on their CCTV cameras or phone calls received by them from the likes of Police, breakdown personal, etc.

This is not hearsay - its reliable evidence from which you can quite easily create an end of day summary of 'near miss incidents'

This can be compared - which is what the BBC have done and no amount of obstructiveness can hide the fact that the application of the cheap / compromised ALR used by Highways England has reduced safety.

As I said previously, it doesn't have to be this way if more care and cash is spent when carrying out the works....

[Bryn666]

I also have no issue with properly designed schemes; I'm a vocal critic of several of the design corner cuts taken by HE.

But none of this changes the fact that;

1. There is no still no standard road engineering definition of a 'near miss', so whoever compiled the statistics has used value judgements which immediately brings the entire data series into question. What I define as a near miss may be completely different to the person across from me.
2. The hard shoulder is not, and has not been for at least 20 years, advertised as a 'place of safety' due to the risk of vehicle incursions. You are advised to leave a vehicle on the hard shoulder and wait on the verge for a reason - in 2011 hard shoulders alone generated 165 KSI collisions. The simple fact is the second your vehicle conks out on a motorway it doesn't matter where it is, it is at risk and you are statistically speaking much more likely to die from that point if you remain in it.
3. The talk of and inevitable reliance on automated obstacle detection is classic HE fetish for technology when the real answer is to spend money on properly staffed control centres and invest more in HETO patrols to radio in issues rather than relying on good nature of passers-by to do it for them. The money HE waste on nonsense such as designing gantries to withstand nuclear bombs and writing propaganda sheets about how good they are could easily be diverted to this.

I am not in any disagreement that the person who claimed 2.5km between refuges was anything but an idiot who clearly never uses motorways. But the design of ERAs seems to be deliberately chosen to be in areas where a massive gabion or retaining structure is needed - no wonder they're having problems with Keir and earthworks bills eh?

[WHBM]

I believe that one of the issues is that "proper" widening, with hard shoulders, was coming out at something like £50m per mile. So ALR was seen as a notably cheap approach. What would it be initially ? £5m per mile ? But then designers, who of course are paid on what is essentially a percentage of scheme cost, would find various ways to include additional work, reinforcements, replacements, etc. Contractors likewise were of course happy with whatever additional work can be mustered. So up go the costs per mile, £10m, £20m - goodness, this is starting to look like not so much of a bargain after all. Strip out half (then more than half) of the ERAs, but ways will be found to get the cost of those back into the project. I'm afraid it's A Game (sometimes referred to as such). And some of us are in the thick of it.

Here's where I got a front wheel puncture at 70mph on the M25. As I pulled over with the tyre shredding an open area came into view. I recalled it had been levelled and used for the breakdown recovery service cabin and trucks when the Enfield tunnel ahead was rebuilt, with no hard shoulder (interesting). So here's (2008 view) where I was able to pull over beyond the hard shoulder and change the wheel, in a reasonable position.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6809266 ... 312!8i6656

What's been done with it now ? Whole area Armco'd off

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6809167 ... 312!8i6656

[XC70]

There is no need to call me a fool.

I don't think you have actually addressed the point I am making, which is that the single statistic (72 near misses before the road was converted, 1,485 in the same length of time afterwards) is impossible to sensibly interpret without understanding whether near misses were being reported with the same consistency both before and after the road was converted to Smart Motorway. We do not know that. And without knowing that, any conclusion drawn from that statistic is a conclusion drawn from incomplete evidence.

Perhaps you would like to inform the RAIB, AAIB, HSE and MAIB they have got their approaches wrong then.

For a near miss event to be officially record then it will have been judged a event with the potential to injury or kill. All the above organisations have a 'zero tolerance' approach and would be extremely alarmed at such a large jump in reported incidents - not to seek ways of dismissing them. Please remember that this information has not come from a BBC reporter making things up - its come from a FOI request into Highways England own records.

Dismissing the numbers is a bit like going round and saying it no problem crime statistics are going up because people are reporting it more. Yes the grater reporting may be good in itself - but what that means is efforts need to be redoubled to tackle it - not prevaricate or dismiss the statistics as not being meaningful as you are trying to do.

Yes, I accept that if traffic volumes go but all else stays the same, up then based on the law of averages you would expect the number of near misses to go up and as such there is less of a concern were the jump in near misses to be small - but the key thing is the two will correlate to a degree and a statistical relationship be drawn. In the case of the M25 that is not the case, traffic levels have not jumped upwards to that extent which would explain an increase in near miss incidents - the large jump can ONLY be explained by the fact that a penny pinching version of ALR has been introduced.

Had things like layby provision been maintained at 600m and radar detection been employed to detect stationary vehicles from the outset then I am sure the number of misses recorded in the post ALR setup would be significantly less.

Perhaps you could enlighten us as to what parameters HE are using to define 'near miss' as I have already said, there is no concept of one in GG 119, so there certainly won't have been any raised in Stage 4 safety audits. That means they've invented a definition on the fly and no-one in the road safety industry will be aware of it?

Seems like unreliable evidence to me then. There must be thousands of 'near misses' daily on the motorway network - aborted lane changes are a near miss, someone travelling at less than a two second gap is a near miss, someone driving one handed is a near miss, all of these could potentially result in a collision.

Like I said, if we applied the RAIB definitions of near misses to roads, they'd be shut down overnight and never reopen. Is that what the naysayers want?

Bryn. HE must have a definition of a near miss and have used this to gather data. Otherwise their response to the FOI request would have been "we do not collect data on this parameter". So there is a metric and it is being recorded and HE consider it important enough to have defined it and to keep recording it.

I too would, however, love to know how they measure it now and how they measured it pre the conversion to smart motorway. Considering they seem to have scant time to monitor the cameras in the control room I would be surprised if it was being captured through CCTV.

[rhyds]

I too would, however, love to know how they measure it now and how they measured it pre the conversion to smart motorway. Considering they seem to have scant time to monitor the cameras in the control room I would be surprised if it was being captured through CCTV.

Also, would that be someone in the control room noticing a near miss "as it happens", or someone else having the tedious job of checking a few hundred hours of CCTV footage (which I strongly doubt)

[Bryn666]

Bryn. HE must have a definition of a near miss and have used this to gather data. Otherwise their response to the FOI request would have been "we do not collect data on this parameter". So there is a metric and it is being recorded and HE consider it important enough to have defined it and to keep recording it.

I too would, however, love to know how they measure it now and how they measured it pre the conversion to smart motorway. Considering they seem to have scant time to monitor the cameras in the control room I would be surprised if it was being captured through CCTV.

But not important enough to tell anyone what it is.

This is typical HE all over, so for all we know these near misses could all be overcautious codswallop or they're covering up on an industrial scale.

I personally don't know how they get away with such seeming lack of accountability on all fronts.

[Bendo]

I'm sure if you ask them, they will tell you. No doubt the told the BBC in their FOI reply.

[Phil]

I also have no issue with properly designed schemes; I'm a vocal critic of several of the design corner cuts taken by HE.

But none of this changes the fact that;

1. There is no still no standard road engineering definition of a 'near miss', so whoever compiled the statistics has used value judgements which immediately brings the entire data series into question. What I define as a near miss may be completely different to the person across from me.
2. The hard shoulder is not, and has not been for at least 20 years, advertised as a 'place of safety' due to the risk of vehicle incursions. You are advised to leave a vehicle on the hard shoulder and wait on the verge for a reason - in 2011 hard shoulders alone generated 165 KSI collisions. The simple fact is the second your vehicle conks out on a motorway it doesn't matter where it is, it is at risk and you are statistically speaking much more likely to die from that point if you remain in it.
3. The talk of and inevitable reliance on automated obstacle detection is classic HE fetish for technology when the real answer is to spend money on properly staffed control centres and invest more in HETO patrols to radio in issues rather than relying on good nature of passers-by to do it for them. The money HE waste on nonsense such as designing gantries to withstand nuclear bombs and writing propaganda sheets about how good they are could easily be diverted to this.

I am not in any disagreement that the person who claimed 2.5km between refuges was anything but an idiot who clearly never uses motorways. But the design of ERAs seems to be deliberately chosen to be in areas where a massive gabion or retaining structure is needed - no wonder they're having problems with Keir and earthworks bills eh?

I totally all get that - but how many more collisions are generated by vehicles being in running lanes rather than hard shoulders?

Obviously the safest place to be is not in your vehicle regardless of where its parked - but beyond that there is a relationship between where your vehicle is and the likelihood it will be hit.

However its not just about those who may be inside the vehicle - an empty vehicle in a live traffic lane is still an obstruction which has the potential to cause death or injury if something hits it.

Yes I know there are arguments that drivers should be aware of the road ahead and be able to respond... but why have hard shoulders in the first place if you are going to go down that route - its not as if drivers being required to respond to the road ahead was any different in 1960 was it?

A vehicle half on a verge is safer than sitting fairly in a traffic lane and a hard shoulder is safer than partly on a verge. It may be that a lay-by is safer still, etc.

The further away from live traffic lanes the vehicle is the less chance there is of a near miss incident occurring.

Thus it follows that even with a high KSI rate of 165 for vehicles on hard shoulders, KSI rates for vehicles that have come to a halt in a live running lane will be even higher.

Hence the point that IF you are going to remove the hard shoulder, which is innately preferable compared to a live running lane (though not as safe as other places), then you need to mitigate the extra risk.

That risk is mitigated we are told by shutting the live lane - but only after 17mins on average!

The statistics from that section of the M25 the BBC have got figures for clearly show the risk has not been mitigated - because you simply cannot come up with a credible answer (even allowing for variations in recording, etc) as to why the difference between the two figures is so large.


Oh and given the way humans have been proved to be rubbish at repetitive tasks - like continually watching CCTV images I would much prefer radar technology employed to detect stationary vehicles than yet more people. Its interesting to note that at level crossings, the ORR consider the use of Radar / Obstacle detection to be far superior to CCTV precisely because of the 'look but did not see' potential of human operators - and the same is likely to be true in a motorway control room.

[Debaser]

This Interim Advice Note (IAN) is a requirement for the use of the new web-based version of
the Accident and Incident Reporting System (AIRS) named AIRSweb. The requirements of
this IAN are applicable to all Contractors and Service Providers who are engaged in Major
Project schemes at options, development and during construction stages and carrying out
the Operation and Management of the HA Network. These requirements also apply in
similar ways to DBFO projects.

This IAN introduces revised requirements and associated guidance for Contractors and
Service Providers for the use of AIRSweb for the reporting of incidents during all
construction, operation and maintenance activities on the Network.

In particular, all Contractors and Service Providers must :

...use AIRSweb to meet the requirements detailed in the Network Management
Manual at cl. 1.6.2;

report all RIDDOR (Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences
Regulations 1995), incidents, i.e. fatal, serious and major injury, must be initially
reported on AIRSweb within 24 hours of them occurring;

report any incident involving a fatality or which is likely to generate press interest,
must be reported to HA immediately, with follow-up where appropriate, and
thereafter make an initial AIRSweb record within 24 hours;

report all other RIDDORs (i.e. those not classified as a FSM) and non-RIDDOR
including Near Misses, as specified in this doc, must be initially reported within 10
days...

Near Misses (to be reported within 10 days)
A near miss is defined as: an unsafe act, omission, occurrence or unsafe behaviour
which could have resulted in injury or damage resulting from a work activity or whilst
at work.

Examples include, but are not limited to:
Unplanned unearthing of underground services.
Unintentional movement of plant or vehicles.
Person(s) or construction and maintenance transport vehicle almost struck by a
road user’s vehicle whilst carrying out construction or maintenance works.
Person(s) almost struck by a falling object in a designated construction or
maintenance works area.
Vehicles without checker chains operating under overhead power cables without
goalpost protection.
The unintentional dropping of any load being lifted.
Unauthorised access into a work area.
Work adjacent to railway lines that has not been authorised.
Failed or unplanned use of ATM signalling used for the protection of construction /
maintenance operatives.
Projectiles that could have caused personal or significant property damage.
Unsafe acts / omissions that could have resulted in personal injury.


Actual severity is defined in five levels:

Level 1 incidents this level is used to record the most serious events. Typically they will
involve death, major injury, lost time injuries of over three days, or
major property damage. They are generally reportable to the Health &
Safety Executive.

Level 2 incidents any event that causes a lost time injury of up to three days, requires
medical treatment, or causes significant damage.

Level 3 incidents any event with a low severity outcome, causing injury which requires
either first aid or no treatment, or minor property damage.

Level 4 Near Miss a near miss is defined as an unsafe act, omission, occurrence or
unsafe behaviour which could have resulted in injury or damage,
resulting from a work activity or whilst at work.

Note: Despite being categorised as a level 4 incident, the level of investigation should be
based initially on the perceived potential severity of the event. All Contractors and
Service Providers are expected to report near miss incidents using AIRSweb in line with the
Agency’s procedure.

Level 5 Hazard a situation or object which has the potential to cause harm if action is
not taken to remove it, repair it or deal with the risk situation.

From this it seems that these recorded near misses are more to do with maintenance/construction personnel being nearly hit by passing road users, rather than road user/road user conflict. Which makes sense given the reporting structure in place.