The future of smart motorways

[KeithW]

I don't think the 'cost of removing them' is the issue - all that you'd need to do would be paint a solid line between lanes 1 and 2, and have the gantry signage over lane 1 permanently display a red X.

I'd imagine the 'cost' would come more in terms of the reduced capacity; e.g., turning the relevant parts of the M1 and M6 that don't currently have hard shoulders from 4-lane motorways into 3-lane motorways would probably have quite an impact.

Just so, motorways such as the M1, M42 etc were regularly congested to the point that incidents occurred because too many vehicles were using it which is why the M42 became the trial site for first smart motorway in 2006. The cost of widening the southern section of the M1 was very high. Between J6A and 9 it was initially budgeted at £240 million but finally cost closer to £300 million for about 7 miles as I recall. Meanwhile the anti smart motorway brigade are quite happy to forget that other major routes such as the A1,A2, A3, A14, A19, A34 etc have no smart features, few VMS signs and no hard shoulders. Welcome to my world, let me present you with the A1 at Great Ponton which I managed to survive despite using it frequently for the best part of 40 years.
https://www.google.com/maps/@52.8631034 ... &entry=ttu

Then of course there was the A14 at Catthorpe in its original configuration where you had to negotiate the roundabouts.


If you want statistics for all road types see this site
https://www.teletracnavman.co.uk/fleet- ... nfographic

Top of the list of dangerous roads in terms of fatal accidents per 10,000 residents is the A1 in Rutland which is Stamford to South Witham.

[jnty]

The difference is that the very design of smart motorways involves removing a safety feature (the hard shoulder) which directly leads to an increase in incidents involving vehicles stopped in a live lane which would have otherwise been on the hard shoulder.

As has been outlined previously ad infinitum, you can identify a multitude of groups who will be negatively impacted by any road intervention. There is always a tradeoff. The difference with smart motorways is that people in cars, who are very often the beneficiaries of that tradeoff, are able to identify the very tightly defined group which is affected thus making it a highly emotive topic.

[Bomag]

The difference is that the very design of smart motorways involves removing a safety feature (the hard shoulder) which directly leads to an increase in incidents involving vehicles stopped in a live lane which would have otherwise been on the hard shoulder.

As has been outlined previously ad infinitum, you can identify a multitude of groups who will be negatively impacted by any road intervention. There is always a tradeoff. The difference with smart motorways is that people in cars, who are very often the beneficiaries of that tradeoff, are able to identify the very tightly defined group which is affected thus making it a highly emotive topic.

The problem is trade off, under GALE - as ALR is deigned, it is acceptable to concentrate residual risk on very small sub-population i.e. those people who could have got to the hard shoulder if there was one but not get to a ERA/EA. M42 ATM was designed on the principle that no groups were exposed to an increase in risk. The group I mentioned had risks maintained on M42 ATM by ERA at 500m centers (nominal), an enforced 50 mph speed limit and full SSD (to high point at least) in LBS1

[jnty]

The difference is that the very design of smart motorways involves removing a safety feature (the hard shoulder) which directly leads to an increase in incidents involving vehicles stopped in a live lane which would have otherwise been on the hard shoulder.

As has been outlined previously ad infinitum, you can identify a multitude of groups who will be negatively impacted by any road intervention. There is always a tradeoff. The difference with smart motorways is that people in cars, who are very often the beneficiaries of that tradeoff, are able to identify the very tightly defined group which is affected thus making it a highly emotive topic.

The problem is trade off, under GALE - as ALR is deigned, it is acceptable to concentrate residual risk on very small sub-population i.e. those people who could have got to the hard shoulder if there was one but not get to a ERA/EA. M42 ATM was designed on the principle that no groups were exposed to an increase in risk. The group I mentioned had risks maintained on M42 ATM by ERA at 500m centers (nominal), an enforced 50 mph speed limit and full SSD (to high point at least) in LBS1

The entire world seems to agree that DHS is the worst of both worlds so that risk assessment clearly wasn't telling the whole story. It is particularly impressive that the DHS concept seems to decrease the safety of hard shoulders on other stretches of motorway.

[Micro The Maniac]

The difference is that the very design of smart motorways involves removing a safety feature (the hard shoulder) which directly leads to an increase in incidents involving vehicles stopped in a live lane which would may have otherwise been on the hard shoulder.

Not all breakdowns can make the hard-shoulder, even where there is one.

[jnty]

The difference is that the very design of smart motorways involves removing a safety feature (the hard shoulder) which directly leads to an increase in incidents involving vehicles stopped in a live lane which would may have otherwise been on the hard shoulder.

Not all breakdowns can make the hard-shoulder, even where there is one.

And there isn't a magical force field which keeps people off it either - I'd much rather be in a smart motorway refuge than a hard shoulder. It's slightly worrying that the discourse around smart motorways implies that many people believe it is safer than it is (and how many 'emergencies' simply vanish on smart motorways when there isn't a hard shoulder to have them in.)

[Bomag]

As has been outlined previously ad infinitum, you can identify a multitude of groups who will be negatively impacted by any road intervention. There is always a tradeoff. The difference with smart motorways is that people in cars, who are very often the beneficiaries of that tradeoff, are able to identify the very tightly defined group which is affected thus making it a highly emotive topic.

The problem is trade off, under GALE - as ALR is deigned, it is acceptable to concentrate residual risk on very small sub-population i.e. those people who could have got to the hard shoulder if there was one but not get to a ERA/EA. M42 ATM was designed on the principle that no groups were exposed to an increase in risk. The group I mentioned had risks maintained on M42 ATM by ERA at 500m centers (nominal), an enforced 50 mph speed limit and full SSD (to high point at least) in LBS1

The entire world seems to agree that DHS is the worst of both worlds so that risk assessment clearly wasn't telling the whole story. It is particularly impressive that the DHS concept seems to decrease the safety of hard shoulders on other stretches of motorway.

I am not aware that any competent practitioner concludes that DHS, as initially applied to M42 ATM is the worse of both worlds. Hard shoulder use was always an issue on the whole network, particularly where there were substandard design elements e.g. diverges. While there are some specific issues with some bit of the network, taking into account traffic flow, hard shoulder violations has not changed over the last 20 years on 'classic' motorways.

In terms of false 'emergencies' , they occur on hard shoulders and EAs, this is no justification for increasing the risk to those who could get to a hard shoulder, but not a EA. I go back to my point, M42 ATM mitigated risk for this group in a way ALR does not.

[Chris5156]

I am not aware that any competent practitioner concludes that DHS, as initially applied to M42 ATM is the worse of both worlds.

Maybe not, but DHS as implemented on the M42 was not replicated elsewhere. Everywhere else DHS was built with more compromises and fewer safeguards. The type of DHS found on the M1 between J10 and 13 is very much the worst of both worlds.

I go back to my point, M42 ATM mitigated risk for this group in a way ALR does not.

Sure, but that's very "if I were going there I wouldn't start from here". You can't put M42-style gold plated DHS on every Smart Motorway - it requires more infrastructure, more cameras, more operators, more refuges, more of everything than was ever found economical elsewhere. To retro-fit it is a non-starter. So the choice for the rest of the existing Smart Motorways, if they were ever to be harmonised, is either ALR or a terrible version of DHS that does not mitigate those risks.

[Micro The Maniac]

And there isn't a magical force field which keeps people off it either - I'd much rather be in a smart motorway refuge than a hard shoulder. It's slightly worrying that the discourse around smart motorways implies that many people believe it is safer than it is (and how many 'emergencies' simply vanish on smart motorways when there isn't a hard shoulder to have them in.)

Indeed... and it frustrates me that the statistics of hard-shoulder collisions, injuries and fatalities is not brought up more.

Hard-shoulders are dangerous places. They are too narrow, and have no safety zones.

[chriscumbria]

- Alternator, garage had told me it was a battery and replaced, it wasn't. Was on a slight uphill in a queue at a traffic light and it had turned some accessories off to save power, then it just cut out completely, no electrical power not even for hazard lights, which was scary as it was still a 50mph 4 lane road. AA saw to me as a priority. Would dread that on a motorway, though it would've likely happened in stop-start traffic rather than speed (where it just about seemed to generate enough power to keep itself running)

I had the same situation on a motorway back in December 2014 when the alternator failed on my car, albeit I got a few minutes warning. I was in the roadworks for the M6 11a to 13 SM works when the engine management lights came on. I moved over to the inside lane and inended to stop at Hilton Park services to call the RAC but I didn't get that far as the engine cutout and the hazards wouldn't work. I did what I believed was safe and left through the passenger door, since I was stuck in Lane 1. It only took 10 minutes for the free recovery to arrive, but what concerned me was this: during that time the police arrived and gave me a telling off for getting out of my car insisting that unless I got back in I would be charged with being a pedestrian on the motorway. Bearing in mind it was 5pm at night in December it felt irresponsible to insist that I sat as a sitting duck in a stationary car in the dark with no hazards on, but when asked they insisted when I asked that if you break down on a MM in a live lane you must remain in your vehicle until assistance arrives. As we're always told quite rightly that if you're on the HS you should get out of you vehicle, could we not make SMs safer by changing the law to allow you to do the same when it's safe to do so?

[jnty]

- Alternator, garage had told me it was a battery and replaced, it wasn't. Was on a slight uphill in a queue at a traffic light and it had turned some accessories off to save power, then it just cut out completely, no electrical power not even for hazard lights, which was scary as it was still a 50mph 4 lane road. AA saw to me as a priority. Would dread that on a motorway, though it would've likely happened in stop-start traffic rather than speed (where it just about seemed to generate enough power to keep itself running)

I had the same situation on a motorway back in December 2014 when the alternator failed on my car, albeit I got a few minutes warning. I was in the roadworks for the M6 11a to 13 SM works when the engine management lights came on. I moved over to the inside lane and inended to stop at Hilton Park services to call the RAC but I didn't get that far as the engine cutout and the hazards wouldn't work. I did what I believed was safe and left through the passenger door, since I was stuck in Lane 1. It only took 10 minutes for the free recovery to arrive, but what concerned me was this: during that time the police arrived and gave me a telling off for getting out of my car insisting that unless I got back in I would be charged with being a pedestrian on the motorway. Bearing in mind it was 5pm at night in December it felt irresponsible to insist that I sat as a sitting duck in a stationary car in the dark with no hazards on, but when asked they insisted when I asked that if you break down on a MM in a live lane you must remain in your vehicle until assistance arrives. As we're always told quite rightly that if you're on the HS you should get out of you vehicle, could we not make SMs safer by changing the law to allow you to do the same when it's safe to do so?

50mph roadworks do complicate matters, but presumably the issue is that there is nothing in the design of motorways that guarantees sufficient visibility to even assess if it is safe to leave your vehicle. Cars travelling at 80mph move 35m per second. Allowing you 10 seconds to leave your vehicle and find a position of safety that means you require 350m of clear rear visibility before you start. How often do you get a gap that big on the motorway anyway? You would hope that motorists would see what's going on from that distance, but then that causes sudden stopping, swerving etc. What if you then have to supervise children or extract babies? It's much simpler to tell everyone to stay inside - the reasons that pedestrians aren't allowed to cross motorways normally don't suddenly stop applying when they happen to have left their car in a live lane.

Others will be more familiar, but I think it's the case that most (possibly almost all) smart motorway breakdown-related fatalities have involved people leaving their car when it was in a live lane.

Having said that, the police insisting that you immediately re-enter your car is absolutely bizarre, especially if you were required to leave a non-motorway verge and re-break the law by entering the motorway. Cynically, I wonder if they were so grumpy about it because it's presumably easier to quickly recover a car if everyone's inside it compared to having to collect everyone from the verge and get them back in on a live lane.

[chriscumbria]

Having said that, the police insisting that you immediately re-enter your car is absolutely bizarre, especially if you were required to leave a non-motorway verge and re-break the law by entering the motorway. Cynically, I wonder if they were so grumpy about it because it's presumably easier to quickly recover a car if everyone's inside it compared to having to collect everyone from the verge and get them back in on a live lane.

The thing was, the police didn't have anything to do with the recovery. When the recovery truck arrived on front of my car, the police left, and the recovery guy asked me to stand behind my car acting as a banksman for him while he loaded my car onto the back. I then rode in his cab while he drove me to the services where I was unloaded for the RAC to sort things out - essentially charging my battery up during the journey to my hotel to give me enough charge in the morning to drive to a garage.

If my family had been in with me, I suspect they may have had to stay in the car for the journey.

Understand your first point, it's a tricky situation to be in. I still think I'd made a sensible decision for the situation I was in though.

[jnty]

Understand your first point, it's a tricky situation to be in. I still think I'd made a sensible decision for the situation I was in though.

Yes absolutely, I'd have probably considered doing the same as you in your specific situation; I just wanted to explain why a blanket tolerance for exiting vehicles in live lanes might be heavily counterproductive.

[Phil]

..........

[Phil]

Hard-shoulders are dangerous places. They are too narrow, and have no safety zones.

They are still beater than being stationary in lane 1 with cars HGVs barrelling up towards you because either NH haven't switch on the signs closing L1 yet / drivers they haven't seen the signs because they are not paying attention / drivers disregarding the signs because they think they have simply been 'left on' after a previous incident cleared etc.

THAT is the point all those praising Smart motorways singly fail to register even if the general public at large can easily appreciate it.

Remember that family who were killed due to an HGV driver smashing into the back of a stationary traffic queue due to driver intention the A34....
[/quote]

[Herned]

...during that time the police arrived and gave me a telling off for getting out of my car insisting that unless I got back in I would be charged with being a pedestrian on the motorway. Bearing in mind it was 5pm at night in December it felt irresponsible to insist that I sat as a sitting duck in a stationary car in the dark with no hazards on, but when asked they insisted when I asked that if you break down on a MM in a live lane you must remain in your vehicle until assistance arrives. As we're always told quite rightly that if you're on the HS you should get out of you vehicle, could we not make SMs safer by changing the law to allow you to do the same when it's safe to do so?

That's a bizarre request, fairly sure I would have ignored that up to and including being arrested by them. Where was the police car? I guess if that was behind yours then that offers some level of protection

[Bryn666]

...during that time the police arrived and gave me a telling off for getting out of my car insisting that unless I got back in I would be charged with being a pedestrian on the motorway. Bearing in mind it was 5pm at night in December it felt irresponsible to insist that I sat as a sitting duck in a stationary car in the dark with no hazards on, but when asked they insisted when I asked that if you break down on a MM in a live lane you must remain in your vehicle until assistance arrives. As we're always told quite rightly that if you're on the HS you should get out of you vehicle, could we not make SMs safer by changing the law to allow you to do the same when it's safe to do so?

That's a bizarre request, fairly sure I would have ignored that up to and including being arrested by them. Where was the police car? I guess if that was behind yours then that offers some level of protection

Worth reminding that the police are not always blessed with intelligent thoughts and will happily throw their weight around with no regard to logic because they have a uniform on.

If you break down in a live lane and it is safe to get out of the vehicle and clear of it, then very much do so. If you're unable and therefore have to stay in a vehicle dial 999 - you are in an emergency situation and the police should be protecting you ASAP.

[SteveA30]

I'd have said, 'I'll stay in the car as long as you are behind, if you leave, I'm outta here'

[fras]

The latest edition of Private Eye (19th January, No 1615), has an article by "Hedgehog" in his regular "Roadrage" spot, about National Highways installations of stopped vehicle detection systems, (SVDs) on Smart Motorways. The article also then looks at Smart Motorway accident figures by analysing the latest five-year accident data. Whilst it is true that total KSI rates on ALRs are lower, (although not by much), once accidents involving only moving vehicles are excluded, then for stopped vehicles on ALRs, the KSI/mile rate is more than double that of normal motorways with hard shoulders., and the Personal Injury Collision rate almost double.

So ALRs have substantially increased the risk for people who have been forced to stop on the motorway.

[RichardA35]

The latest edition of Private Eye (19th January, No 1615), has an article by "Hedgehog" in his regular "Roadrage" spot, about National Highways installations of stopped vehicle detection systems, (SVDs) on Smart Motorways. The article also then looks at Smart Motorway accident figures by analysing the latest five-year accident data. Whilst it is true that total KSI rates on ALRs are lower, (although not by much), once accidents involving only moving vehicles are excluded, then for stopped vehicles on ALRs, the KSI/mile rate is more than double that of normal motorways with hard shoulders., and the Personal Injury Collision rate almost double.

So ALRs have substantially increased the risk for people who have been forced to stop on the motorway.

Indeed just as Bomag pointed out the promoters have gone for a global risk equivalency by trading off risks for different groups rather than ensuring the risks for all groups were mitigated to as low as reasonably practicable. It wouldn't wash in many other industries e.g. nuclear where all risks mitigated to ALARP is standard.

The difference is that the very design of smart motorways involves removing a safety feature (the hard shoulder) which directly leads to an increase in incidents involving vehicles stopped in a live lane which would have otherwise been on the hard shoulder.

As has been outlined previously ad infinitum, you can identify a multitude of groups who will be negatively impacted by any road intervention. There is always a tradeoff. The difference with smart motorways is that people in cars, who are very often the beneficiaries of that tradeoff, are able to identify the very tightly defined group which is affected thus making it a highly emotive topic.

The problem is trade off, under GALE - as ALR is deigned, it is acceptable to concentrate residual risk on very small sub-population i.e. those people who could have got to the hard shoulder if there was one but not get to a ERA/EA. M42 ATM was designed on the principle that no groups were exposed to an increase in risk. The group I mentioned had risks maintained on M42 ATM by ERA at 500m centers (nominal), an enforced 50 mph speed limit and full SSD (to high point at least) in LBS1