All Lane Running - Smart Motorways ?

[roadtester]

You say "statistically you have 9 minutes to live on the hard shoulder". I am afraid I simply don't believe you. Can you provide a source please? Thanks.

I'm struggling to find a source at the moment but I'm 99% sure there was a HE press release on it in the last year or two and it was also repeated on the A1 documentary last year. I can find articles quoting increased chances of between 3x and 7x of having an accident if you are stationary on the hard shoulder.

Did you expect it to be safe? Why do you think they shut two lanes for an offside tyre change now? Why do we use crash cushions/IPVs?

I've seen the notion that you have a life expectancy of x minutes repeated in articles and so on over the years, although the number of minutes seems to vary and no original source ever seems to be quoted - so whether or not there is some underlying truth here, the notion certainly enjoys wide currency, as a quick Google will confirm.

Whatever the actual data say, there's no doubt that hard shoulders are dangerous places. If I heard/understood it correctly, the voiceover on tonight's episode of The Motorway on Channel 5 said that 100 people are killed each year on UK motorway hard shoulders. That's a lot, but I doubt it corresponds to a life expectancy of nine minutes.

[roadtester]

Seems to me the bigger problem is driver education. Some of the clips on the Panorama show were of vehicles stopped in lane 3 or 4 on motorways where a hard shoulder was present (M25 maple cross by the look of it).
Remember that until quite recently learners were banned from motorways. If you can’t use it how are you supposed to learn to use it correctly?! There are generations of drivers who are winging it when it comes to motorway driving and for me that’s a bigger issue than the infrastructure.
If there had been better publicity when smart motorways were introduced then it would have definitely helped.

Not all failures will leave a driver with enough momentum or power to get to a hard shoulder - especially from lane 3 or 4.

That's why I'm slightly wary of some of the simplistic criticism of smart motorways/getting rid of hard shoulders - although I definitely think we need more analysis of the experience so far.

[Berk]

So you leave your car, bearing in mind the weather conditions could be poor, or even atrocious), you manage to climb the verge.

You can ring for help - if your phone has charge. Then what??

Many 999 callers are told “we're too busy to help right now”. It’s highly likely that the HE operators would say the same thing.

How is being trapped on a verge any better than remaining in your car?? Bearing in mind that, just because it’s possible you could be hit by another vehicle, that doesn’t mean it’ll be consequence free for them either. The other driver could suffer injuries or damage to their vehicle, or even criminal charges too.

I’m not dismissing the advice to leave your car, but with no clear guidance, or expectation of when you can get help, if you’re encountering pouring rain, or freezing conditions, you might be as at greater risk from the elements than just being illegally hit by something else.

And that’s whether the red crosses are correctly showing or not.

[MrEd]

Absolutely true, I agree.

I just thought it was a bad example to give when the narrative was about the loss of hard shoulders. If your car dies suddenly and you can’t get to the hard shoulder it makes no difference to standard motorways!

[owen b]

Seems to me the bigger problem is driver education. Some of the clips on the Panorama show were of vehicles stopped in lane 3 or 4 on motorways where a hard shoulder was present (M25 maple cross by the look of it).

The programme interviewed a few drivers at an MSA on a smart motorway section who were clueless about smart motorways. I agree, driver education has been insufficient, and too many motorists are unaware or confused by the different types of smart motorway (too often I've seen cars running on hard shoulders when they are not active running lanes).

[Berk]

Absolutely true, I agree.

I just thought it was a bad example to give when the narrative was about the loss of hard shoulders. If your car dies suddenly and you can’t get to the hard shoulder it makes no difference to standard motorways!

It was mentioned earlier on about how people do “bad things” in live lanes. Perhaps that’s because drivers have familiarity with dual carriageways/parkways where stopping on the carriageway (even in lane 2) isn’t always seen as that big a deal. Even when you’re talking about the A43/A19/A1139 and so on.

From D2 to D2M, it’s not that great a leap, and again from D2M to D3M and so on. It would suggest driving culture and learning need to change. And that all inappropriate stops need to stop. The live carriageway is not a place to exchange insurance details.

[MrEd]

There are a lot of bad habits and drivers with poor knowledge out there.
I did a speed awareness course a few years ago and the ignorance of the Highway Code from about 80% of the room was scary. Wouldn’t be at all popular but re-testing drivers every 10 years might help.

[owen b]

How is being trapped on a verge any better than remaining in your car?? Bearing in mind that, just because it’s possible you could be hit by another vehicle, that doesn’t mean it’ll be consequence free for them either. The other driver could suffer injuries or damage to their vehicle, or even criminal charges too.

I’m not dismissing the advice to leave your car, but with no clear guidance, or expectation of when you can get help, if you’re encountering pouring rain, or freezing conditions, you might be as at greater risk from the elements than just being illegally hit by something else.

Advice on conventional motorways is to leave the vehicle on the hard shoulder and get off the motorway. I've done this on one occasion a long time ago when the exhaust on the old Transit I was driving fell off. Two of us adults then frog marched the remaining passengers over the barrier and a few hundred metres alongside the carriageway to an overbridge. Far, far better than risking being rear ended by an errant HGV. I would do the same on a smart motorway if I was in lane one and I could get out of the car on the verge side of the lane. In a situation like that, getting wet or cold would be the least of my worries. Wet and/or cold weather won't kill me in 30 minutes, traffic easily could.

[MrEd]

Another point which was mentioned briefly was in the case of an accident when emergency vehicles need to get to the scene quickly. A hard shoulder facilitates this. In a serious incident this could be vital.

[Bendo]

Another point which was mentioned briefly was in the case of an accident when emergency vehicles need to get to the scene quickly. A hard shoulder facilitates this. In a serious incident this could be vital.

Emergency vehicles don't tend to travel that quickly on the hard shoulder, only really of use when traffic is stationary and in that situation a "smart" motorway also facilities it by allowing for all lanes to be closed and the emergency vehicles to travel the wrong way.

[trickstat]

So you leave your car, bearing in mind the weather conditions could be poor, or even atrocious), you manage to climb the verge.

You can ring for help - if your phone has charge. Then what??

Many 999 callers are told “we're too busy to help right now”. It’s highly likely that the HE operators would say the same thing.

How is being trapped on a verge any better than remaining in your car?? Bearing in mind that, just because it’s possible you could be hit by another vehicle, that doesn’t mean it’ll be consequence free for them either. The other driver could suffer injuries or damage to their vehicle, or even criminal charges too.

I’m not dismissing the advice to leave your car, but with no clear guidance, or expectation of when you can get help, if you’re encountering pouring rain, or freezing conditions, you might be as at greater risk from the elements than just being illegally hit by something else.

And that’s whether the red crosses are correctly showing or not.

However unpleasant it may be, it is extremely unlikely in the UK that the conditions will kill or hospitalize you.

As for climbing the verge, many sections of motorway have flat verges or are on embankments.

If you stay in the car, you have to both get of the car and get out of the way of anything heading towards it.

[c2R]

So you leave your car, bearing in mind the weather conditions could be poor, or even atrocious), you manage to climb the verge.

You can ring for help - if your phone has charge. Then what??

Many 999 callers are told “we're too busy to help right now”. It’s highly likely that the HE operators would say the same thing.

How is being trapped on a verge any better than remaining in your car?? Bearing in mind that, just because it’s possible you could be hit by another vehicle, that doesn’t mean it’ll be consequence free for them either. The other driver could suffer injuries or damage to their vehicle, or even criminal charges too.

I’m not dismissing the advice to leave your car, but with no clear guidance, or expectation of when you can get help, if you’re encountering pouring rain, or freezing conditions, you might be as at greater risk from the elements than just being illegally hit by something else.

And that’s whether the red crosses are correctly showing or not.

However unpleasant it may be, it is extremely unlikely in the UK that the conditions will kill or hospitalize you.

As for climbing the verge, many sections of motorway have flat verges or are on embankments.

If you stay in the car, you have to both get of the car and get out of the way of anything heading towards it.

I was on the side of the M6 standing in a narrow gap between the crash barrier and a retaining wall in temperatures of around zero degrees with light rain for a number of hours until the road could be closed and the car recovered. Someone more frail could easily have succumbed to hypotermia in such conditions - although perhaps the police and highways would have organised the closure more quickly in such circumstances.

[Conekicker]

Another point which was mentioned briefly was in the case of an accident when emergency vehicles need to get to the scene quickly. A hard shoulder facilitates this. In a serious incident this could be vital.

Emergency vehicles don't tend to travel that quickly on the hard shoulder, only really of use when traffic is stationary and in that situation a "smart" motorway also facilities it by allowing for all lanes to be closed and the emergency vehicles to travel the wrong way.

No offence intended but you have no idea how quickly it can go pear-shaped on a motorway and how difficult it can be sometimes for the emergency services to get through. Within a couple of minutes you can alarmingly easily get miles of standing traffic in all lanes. Especially on a Smart Motorway.

Travel the wrong way - again you have no idea how long it takes for this to occur. Five minutes it most certainly ain't, half an hour after the incident occurs if you're lucky on the very best of days.

[Bendo]

Another point which was mentioned briefly was in the case of an accident when emergency vehicles need to get to the scene quickly. A hard shoulder facilitates this. In a serious incident this could be vital.

Emergency vehicles don't tend to travel that quickly on the hard shoulder, only really of use when traffic is stationary and in that situation a "smart" motorway also facilities it by allowing for all lanes to be closed and the emergency vehicles to travel the wrong way.

No offence intended but you have no idea how quickly it can go pear-shaped on a motorway and how difficult it can be sometimes for the emergency services to get through. Within a couple of minutes you can alarmingly easily get miles of standing traffic in all lanes. Especially on a Smart Motorway.

Travel the wrong way - again you have no idea how long it takes for this to occur. Five minutes it most certainly ain't, half an hour after the incident occurs if you're lucky on the very best of days.

Best tell HE then. That is their reasoning.

[Bryn666]

Well that episode of Panorama was pretty damning.

Widening on the cheap... we’ve said that for years.

Yep. All the problems that the operational guys said would happen, (and were pretty much ignored when they said it), seem to have happened. Color me entirely unsurprised.

I seem to recall the original suggestion was to just remark the M1 through South Yorkshire as dual four lanes with laybys? Back in about 2004 or so? The idea was certainly floating before the M42 went live. And yes, I remember you being utterly scathing about it.

[rhyds]

No - but I reckon that there must be a bit of military kit out there which is capable of spotting a stationary target amongst moving ones.

How many battlefields look like four lanes of weekday M25?

Radar was a British invention after all - and defence is one of the areas British companies do well at so I find it hard to believe that its impossible to detect stationary vehicles with it....

You do realise that RADAR can mean anything from a ship based system that can cook seagulls mid-flight to a set of parking sensors on a Nissan Micra? Just saying "use RADAR!" is like saying "just use computers! I'm sure Currys have some computers!"

I can see you are no engineer with your flippant and quite wrong attitude.

Only a fool thinks you point a radar at something and you magically get what you want to see. The truth is these is there is an awful lot of computer processing that goes on with radar images - be it on a ship, in the skys or on the ground - and this processing can be used to ensure the radar image only shows what you want to see. Thats before you get onto the need to compensate for various radar jamming techniques that an enemy may use.

The radar used in the rail industry for their crossings is more usually found in the nose cone of a F16 fighter jet - what makes the same thing work in a plane and at a British railway level crossing is the software used to process the image.

As such its quite likely the military have the ability to do what is needed - but as with all military kit its probably very expensive and not suited to employment on a motorway gantry any more than plonking an F16 beside a level crossing is a good way to detect the crossing safe for trains.

So what you're saying is that level crossing cameras are based on classified military technology from a 40 year old fighter plane? Have you a source for this? My home heating system effectively runs on jet fuel but it doesn't mean I've got an F16 in my airing cupboard

As others in this thread have pointed out to you the challenges that face any detection system on the railway network are totally different to that on the road network

First off: level crossings are rarely more than one lane wide in either direction. That is a totally different situation to a D4 ALR motorway where you can have four saturated lanes or one single vehicle and three empty lanes or any combination in between.

Secondly: Level crossings are rarely built for high road traffic speeds. Locally the highest limit I can think of for somewhere with a level crossing is the A470/A489 junction at Caersws and that one's 50mph. Any motorway system would have to be able to deal with accurate detection at 70mph+ in all weathers and at all hours

Thirdly: As has been mentioned constantly, roads are more unpredictable than railways. With speed limiting, ATC and other systems you can be damned sure of where your train is and when its going to reach a level crossing, and the likelihood of a train randomly moving from one track to the other is Zero unless something terrible has happened, whereas cars change lanes constantly, straddle two lanes and so on.

Fourthly: If the military really did have an all singing, all dancing targeting system of this type then it would surely be classified, and therefore they would not want their system rolled out on the motorway network where it would be trivial for any foreign power to gain access to it. It would make the questions around 5G network security seem like child's play!

[BOH]

My take on these ALR Smart Motorways is why can they not create a semi-continuous new hard-shoulder at the same time the existing one has been converted to a running lane?

By "semi-continuous" I mean where it is easily possible, ie so not where the they would have to demolish an overbridge or significantly widen a long viaduct. This would create an emergency shoulder along probably 85% of the motorway which is better than the current standard of around every 2.5 miles which is ridiculous.

The M25 SW quadrant was done like this and still has a near continuous hard-shoulder, even managing to thread a new part of it through the outer 2 piers of a couple of overbridges in places. Contrast that to the recent M3 Smart Motorway between J2 and 4A which has the 2.5 mile spaced refuges, even though alot of the motorway runs through pretty open heathland between J2 and J3 so there was plenty of room. A real opportunity lost.....

[A303Chris]

Seems to me the bigger problem is driver education. Some of the clips on the Panorama show were of vehicles stopped in lane 3 or 4 on motorways where a hard shoulder was present (M25 maple cross by the look of it).

The programme interviewed a few drivers at an MSA on a smart motorway section who were clueless about smart motorways. I agree, driver education has been insufficient, and too many motorists are unaware or confused by the different types of smart motorway (too often I've seen cars running on hard shoulders when they are not active running lanes).

Smart Motorways are fully included within the new Highway Code, but honestly how many people have read it since there driving test. I passed mine in 1986 and there have been several revisions of the code since then. I have a copy for work. The classic change is when queuing for road works and lane drops use all lanes and merge in turn at the restriction. Went along the A30 in Cornwall in October and there was a lane drop due to roadworks, lane one closed with a stationary line in lane 2 from 800 yards with lane 1 free, stayed in lane 1 and merged at the cones, fully in accordance with the highway code. People still complain and hoot you, but using both lanes and merging the queue moves faster and you're following the Highway Code.

I personally don't think ALR motorways are unsafe, the problem is drivers do not know how to drive on them. We had middle lane drivers we now have lane 3 drivers.

I have broken down on the M4 with a HS and got all passengers out, up the embankment onto the verge. The reason why, its what you are recommended to do and while waiting for breakdown receovery, saw three times the car nearly get clipped by vehicles crossing the line. HS are not the safe environment everyone thinks they are. In fact within 10 minutes an HE vehicle appeared and the officers were surprised to see us at the top of the embankment, saying "I wish more people did that, they don't realise how dangerous the hard shoulders are"

[A303Chris]

My take on these ALR Smart Motorways is why can they not create a semi-continuous new hard-shoulder at the same time the existing one has been converted to a running lane?

By "semi-continuous" I mean where it is easily possible, ie so not where the they would have to demolish an overbridge or significantly widen a long viaduct. This would create an emergency shoulder along probably 85% of the motorway which is better than the current standard of around every 2.5 miles which is ridiculous.

The M25 SW quadrant was done like this and still has a near continuous hard-shoulder, even managing to thread a new part of it through the outer 2 piers of a couple of overbridges in places. Contrast that to the recent M3 Smart Motorway between J2 and 4A which has the 2.5 mile spaced refuges, even though alot of the motorway runs through pretty open heathland between J2 and J3 so there was plenty of room. A real opportunity lost.....

The thing with the M3, it may be open heathland, but all the works are within the Highway Boundary and therefore are permitted development and do not require planning permission, thus speeding the whole process up.

The M4 was rapid widened between J8/9 and J5 from two to three lanes in 1972 just after the 3 lane section west from Maidenhead opened. The hard shoulder was converted to a new lane one and a non continuous hard shoulder was created between all bridges (under and over), where no hard shoulder was in place.

However to convert this to smart motorway required new bridges between J8/9 and J4b and therefore require land outside of the highway boundary. As a result the Infrastructure Commission determined the application and held an inquiry which took 2 years from start to decision.
I attended several sessions and you had all the non road, Friends of the Earth, Transport 2000 groups there saying no to road building ignoring that with electric cars and cleaner petrol ones, emissions were going down trying to stop the whole project. I made a submission for Reading Borough Council and we were the only authority to support widening as all the others wanted the money spent on public transport etc.

My submission, which was reported on local BBC news and a few nationals showed that the smartification of J8/9 to J12 was not need as the capacity issues were between J8/9 and J4B which caused congestion and backed up. The submission stated that if new bridges etc and land outside the highway was required, J8/9 to J4b should have been widened conventionally with a HS all the wat through, then if this did give the option to make it 5 lane smart in the future when all the technology was available. Obviously the Inspectors didn’t agree.

But what the process showed me, is we are to tolerant in this country to wacky third party groups and give then disproportionate amount of to present there usually very anecdotal arguments. It is no wonder the HE proceed with smart motorways if they can widen the roads without the considerable expense of a public inquiry.

[roadtester]

I've just caught up with the Panorama on smart motorways and I'm not sure I was swayed either way.

Of course it stands to reason that all things being equal a road with a hard shoulder is safer than one without, but it still wasn't clear to me whether smart motorway measures could compensate or more than compensate for the absence of a shoulder or not. Citing several examples of bad incidents on smart motorways tells us nothing about how they compare with the alternatives.

With much of the motorway network now having four lanes, I wonder how useful hard shoulders are anyway. A hard shoulder isn't much help if your car has a sudden failure in lane 4. Surely, even on motorways with hard shoulders, we need smartification to deal with that? It's hard to think of other options that might work. I suppose a second hard shoulder to the right of the main carriageway beyond lane 3/4 might help but I'd have thought that would be a non-starter in terms of expense and practicality.

One subject that was mentioned almost in passing in the Panorama - there was a suggestion that 'dynamic' hard shoulders, where depending on how busy the road is, the hard shoulder may be signed as either a shoulder or a running lane, could be phased out.

I've always thought this sort of arrangement was too confusing and it might be simpler to go with straightforward ALR/HSR.