It has been announced this week that instructions for using smart motorways will be added to The Highway Code after Highways England suggest they become dangerous when motorists misunderstand how to use them safely.
Head of Road Safety at Highways England, Jeremy Phillips, stated that:
‘We know more needs to be done to help motorists understand exactly how modern motorways and high-speed roads operate.
‘The updated edition of The Highway Code will help inform the next generation of road users as well as giving important updates to those with many miles under their belt, to help us all stay safer.’
The announcement has been met with contempt, however, as those impacted by smart motorway accidents brand the development ‘insulting.’
Claire Mercer’s husband, Jason, 44, lost his life on a stretch of the M1 with no hard shoulder in 2019. She has spoken out against the comments made by Phillips:
‘They keep referring to “educating users”, but how do you educate someone who’s broken down in a car in a live lane of traffic with lorries zooming past? We need action that will result in tangible change. Everyone keeps saying, “It’s not my responsibility”.
‘This change to The Highway Code is just too little, too late. There are 44 people dead already. The fact it’s taken them a year is even more ridiculous.’
Updates to The Highway Code concerning smart motorways could include instructions on what to do if your vehicle breaks down in a live lane, how motorway operators warn of broken-down vehicles ahead with signage, and how to use emergency refuge areas safely if necessary.
[Image Source: Shutterstock, March 2021]
Is updating The Highway Code enough to improve smart motorway safety?
Currently, refuge areas on smart motorways are 1.5 miles apart, and high-tech safety measures such as cameras that identify stationary vehicles have yet to be rolled out on many miles of smart motorway.
Advice for motorists broken down in a live lane of a smart motorway includes attempting to reach an emergency refuge area if possible, turning on hazard lights and exiting the vehicle (through the passenger door) to stand behind the crash barrier.
If done successfully, this still leaves a stationary vehicle in the path of fast-moving oncoming traffic.
Over the last few months, issues with smart motorway safety have been frequently addressed, and the update to The Highway Code is just one step in the government’s 18-point plan to reduce the risk of accidents.
Motoring experts are still concerned, however, that updating The Highway Code or making any other small changes to smart motorways when other safety measures are already lacking will not be enough to prevent further tragedy, and instead have suggested that smart motorways should be scrapped altogether:
‘How many people must die before you will make a decision and immediately suspend the use of the hard shoulder for driving traffic? Enough is enough,’ questioned shadow Transport Secretary Jim McMahon, earlier this year when announcements for smart motorways to stay were made.
Rotherham Labour MP, Sarah Champion, has also previously commented that: ‘The government needs to grasp that there is nothing ‘smart’ about creating death traps.’
However, Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, has insisted that scrapping smart motorways altogether would do more harm than good: ‘I don’t think there’s a route to simply undo it. We’ve got to make what’s there safe.’
Instead, Mr Shapps feels that ‘an update of The Highway Code to provide more guidance’ will be a positive step forwards in improving the safety measures on smart motorways.
A spokesman for the Department for Transport spoke to support Mr Shapps decision, despite public concern: ‘The safety of the drivers and passengers using these routes remains the Transport Secretary’s personal priority. He will press Highways England to deliver improvements as soon as possible.’
While improving motorway safety may be a priority, experts like RAC head of roads policy Nicholas Lyes have still been left wondering whether any changes made will prove successful in reassuring road users that smart motorways are safe:
‘Even when all these issues are addressed, we wonder whether they will go far enough to overcome people’s fear about the permanent removal of the hard shoulder on these schemes.’
Is driver misunderstanding to blame for smart motorway safety issues? Do you think enough is being done to keep prevent further smart motorway deaths? Or do you think the issue will persist until smart motorways are scrapped?
Let us know in the comments.
Smart motorways are an absolute joke. They seemed like a good idea but it just doesn’t work. Even if every driver was fully briefed on how to use smart motorways, it wouldn’t make much difference. For one, people will still choose to flout the restrictions. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who obeys the posted speed limit and there are still drivers, private and commercial alike, who ignore closed lanes. It doesn’t help that the network is woefully mismanaged. Often restrictions are in place for no reason because the signs are either malfunctioning or are slow to be updated when the hazard has been cleared. This leads to people mistrusting and thus ignoring them.
All of this discussion, as with many other motoring issues, just avoids the elephant in the room. There are TOO MANY VEHICLES on our roads. That’s the reason why schmes like this come into being, to try to ease congestion. The government (whoever it is) needs to grasp the nettle and address this problem once and for all, for many reasons.
Every time you add lanes to a motorway they get filled up. I think those that agree with them need educating. They must be reversed immediately.
In my sincerest opinion the whole process looks ‘beautiful on paper’ but when it comes down to practice, it’s a different matter. I have been driving for about 44 years safely and with consideration for my fellow drivers but these Smart Motorway/s gives me the shivers. I use the M1 a lot but I think I will use alternative routes which will take me longer or arm myself with more triangles and a red flag to wave at oncoming traffic ahead of my vehicle from behind the crash barriers to warn them of the impending danger. PLEASE, PLEASE …..MAKE SURE THAT THE WARNING SYSTEM AND EVERYTHING ELSE WORKS PERFECTLY BEFORE OPENING UP THE THEN HARD SHOULDER TO TRAFFIC.
At a flick of a switch they can change the hard shoulder into a working lane, so four lanes become five lanes of constant traffic, which in theory sounds like a working solution.
Do they have a switch or fairy dust to transform five lanes of traffic into four when the emergency services are needed like the police, ambulance or fire?? If cars break down how are the Recovery vehicles going to rescue passengers and cars.
With so much evinces on electric vehicles, (which cannot be pushed out of the way like Petrol or Diesel Vehicles) if they break down, what is smart or safe about that ?
The people who planned these, clearly don’t commute on a daily basis and don’t have the logic to see how dangerous they are.
I’m constantly driving around the country and see for myself how idiotic this system is, they should be renamed slaughter lanes.
What is ‘smart’ about the whiz-kids at Highways England?
They seem to behellbent on saving money by foisting ‘smart’ everything onto ordinary, less than smart, motorists. Then passing the buck for their failure & currently 44 deaths, by blaming us for not unnderstanding how these thig are supposed to work
Smart motorways will always be a death trap.
So you’re a family of five 2 adults 3 children aged 1 to 13 and it’s the middle of the night,
And you have to scrabble around trying to get them all out safely.
Get round that you pin stripe nuts.
Smart motorways are farcical. Even if everyone uses them as intended you can never factor in when a car will breakdown. It doesn’t know it has to wait until the next emergency refuge area – it will break down when it breaks down. Presumably these ministers playing Russian roulette with motorists lives never actually drive themselves but rely on chauffeurs?
Littercams are a great idea.I regularly litter pick in my area.I can completely clear a road and the next day there are cans everywhere, often there are no pavements for pedestrians so the cans have obviously been thrown from cars. I agree that penalties need to be real deterrents to stop the selfish litterers.
In Spain, where we go for our holidays (when we can…) drivers have to carry triangular warning signs. They proved totally effective when we once broke down on a motorway with no hard shoulder. Of course traffic is 90% less dense than in England, and walking back along the edge of the motorway was a bit uncomfortable, but safe, when placing the signs at about 100 yards and another at about 200 yards along. Expect the first sign would alert lorry drivers of the danger ahead when engrossed on their IT devices before crashing straight into a stationary vehicle, as tragically recently happened.
Rule 274 states not to use them on UK motorways.
Smart motorways yes are a joke as the technology to go with them has yet to be fully developed. Even then you are still relying on a human being to respond immediately and the hazard signals to work effectively, also you need the other drivers to be able to respond immediately.
Until we all drive robotic vehicles this smart motorway system will never work.
I would like to know why the government are not listening to sensible reasoning and how many more people are going to die before they lift their head up from the sand.
Smart motorways are NOT safe for anyone unfortunate enough to break down on one. Regardless of however many cameras are installed, the system is still reliant on a human being sat in front of a screen, and we all know that humans are by no means infallible.
It’s ok for Highways England and Grant Shapps to say that they are safe, and that it’s the motorist that needs re-educating, but they are obviously going deflect the blame for accidents away from themselves.
As for adding the information to the Highway Code, that has to be a non starter. I am a National Observer for IAM/Roadsmart, and nine out of ten people I teach to become Advanced Drivers freely admit to never having looked at a Highway Code since passing their DVSA driving test, which in some cases can be fifty years or more.
Smart Motorways are not smart, and the Government and Highways England should be man enough to stand up and admit that they have got it wrong.
I totally agree with all the points you have raised but 2 more come to mind; 1) the time that it takes for all the occupants to get out of the broken down vehicle safely when taking into account the difficulty a driver faces to get over to the passenger side of a modern vehicle with the raised, central armrest and 2) have you noticed that when you are driving at 70mph, for example, it is, for some reason, strangely difficult to judge the speed of the vehicle in front of you when it is travelling too slowly for that lane, let alone if it has broken down? To me, these are definitely not ‘smart’ motorways but more of a ‘death trap’ motorway.
This is so typical, blaming motorists for a stupid idea they were not consulted about and have no influence.
Driving needs to be simple to keep it safe. Not make it incredibly complicated.
The clue is in the name “Smart”. Everything Smart is rubbish. Smart meters etc
Any vehicle broken down on a motorway is dangerous and has to get to the hard shoulder ASAP. The hard shoulder should only be used for emergencies and is not suited to moving traffic, so anyone stopped in one should not be in danger from other traffic driving on it. The hard shoulder should not be used as a motorway lane.
And what about any foreign driver venturing onto a Smart Motorway. Will they know what to do in the event of an emergency? Of course not. They, like most of us, will immediately pull over looking for the hard shoulder only to find there isn’t one. Then what will they do?
Stopping on a hard shoulder was dangerous enough so what ‘intelligent’ person thought it was a good idea to take them away? As for getting out of the passenger door not many people would be able to do this unless they have an old car with a bench seat so you have to face opening the drivers door, what a nightmare.
Jeremy Phillips, who is this stupid person?, he should be sacked immediatly, all I can say is if you break down on a smart motorway and can’t get to a safe area, then run for your life!
How many people in power who make these stupid statements have tried to exit a car via the near side door. If you are in the drivers seat it is near on impossible if you are over three years old!
My 4yr old grandson does it with acrobatic speed, me, however, nearing my 3 score and 10 would find it ‘challenging’ even if my life depended on it, which it would.
What a joke, if you break down exit through the passenger side door, What if you break down in say the second or third lane in very busy traffic how do get the car into the nearside lane? In most modern cars it would be very difficult to scramble over the centre bulkhead to even open the passenger door never mind get out. If this ridiculous system is continued with the infrastructure as it is, the speed limit will have to be reduced to about 40mph.
My wife is disabled. She is in the passenger seat and cannot get out without my getting the wheelchair out of the boot for her. So I cannot get out of the passenger side. And the wheelchair would be in an active lane, no matter in which lane we broke down. The whole ‘smart’ idea is very dangerous.
If they want Smart Motorways to be considered safe they need to reinstate the hard shoulder on them, simple as that. It is an essential refuge for breakdowns or if emergency/rescue services need to get past built up traffic.
If anyone is to break down it can sometimes be difficult to get from the driver’s side to the passenger side, what they suggest is impractical and simply not good enough
Smart Motorways are a great idea. Just change the gaps between safe areas to 0 (zero) yards!
That’s so sensible! Then we could join up all the refuges and give them a new name. Any ideas? ‘Hard shoulder’ sounds a good one. Whoever thought up ‘smart’ motorways was definitely not smart themselves.
One cheapish solution would be to install panic/emergency buttons every 20mtrs or so that could be activated quickly in a breakdown situation putting the red cross sign on about 1 mile back giving most numpties some chance of not driving into a stationary vehicle – TAKE NOTE MR SHAPPS
I think Smart Motorway should be renamed; when they open the hard shoulder, they should be called suicide lanes as the original plan was to have breakdown areas every 1/2 mile, we now know that they are normally 1 & 1/2 miles apart, maybe the people that made this decision should be charged with Manslaughter
I think I would sooner have a longer journey and be safe with a hard shoulder.
My personal opinion is that further smart motorways should be banned. As for the existing ones if it’s too late to convert them back to a ‘Hard Shoulder’ then my thoughts would be to drastically reduce the speed limit in that Lane to no more than 30 mph.
I call them Thick motorways. Nothing Smart about them. Speed restrictions for miles with no evident problem, so widely ignored posing a danger to those who abide and eventually have to go with the speed of the traffic to be safe. Refuges are useless in a breakdown or collision. You can compute the odds of being near one! Who the hell reads the Highway Code once passed! These people are presumptuous box ticking idiots. Highway Code changed, refuges in place box ticked job done. Well no it’s not!
Some years ago I was driving at night in torrential rain on the M4. The wipers were struggling to clear the windscreen and my wiper broke. I had to stop as I couldn’t see anything and other road users would have struggled to see me. I was lucky that there was a hard shoulder as a smart motorway would have made the situation life threatening..
Surely it would be safer to pull over into the outside lane if you break down. That way you can’t be hit by a 44 ton lorry and the traffic would build up behind you very quickly creating a buffer and slow all traffic on the motorway down.
How dare these people try to blame the road users for the accidents
The blame is well and truly with the idiots who devised the scheme in the first place
All these replies demonstate how idiotic the concept of so-called smart motorways is. Britain (at least England) is so densely populated that four-lane or five-lane motorways are a necessity, if we need motorways. PLUS A HARD SHOULDER – NO CONTEST.
Unbelievable. Where is the common sense. When we were going through years of motorway upheaval because of the installation of these so called “smart” motorways I kept thinking how dangerous they are going to be. Having experienced a blow out on the outside lane of the M62 (before it became “smart” ) and having to manoeuvre over to the hard shoulder and get out of the car to fix it or to wait for help, I wondered what I would have done without that hard shoulder and it still worries me now. I also wonder how emergency services are going to get to an accident quickly without that hard shoulder and let’s not forget the next problem on the horizon with the green obsession for all cars to run on electricity. What’s going to happen when hundreds of cars are stuck on the motorway for hours because of an accident ahead and all the batteries go flat!!! The people on these planning committees might be clever academically but have nill common sense in my opinion.
The public should not need to be educated to use Smart motorways, they should simply scrap them.
How about having a public vote on the issue, and I think they will be shocked how many want to abolish this ridiculous and dangerous idea.
It won’t happen though because they have spent too much already to backtrack.
Will keep brief as most comments have already been made… but what if the passenger is disabled or in a wheel chair!!!!!
Fortunately at the moment this not apply to my family or me.
We really do have a lot of expensive idiots in charge!
They are not smart at all and the whole concept should be scrapped without delay. Too many people have died already due to these death traps and many families have been devastated. Detection and subsequent directives to avoid a stationary vehicle are woefully inadequate and improvements are too expensive now for a government strapped for cash.
My advice-ignore lane 1 altogether when driving! It may be against the spirit of having an extra lane but I would sooner do that than run into a stationary vehicle!
I already follow your advice once conditions are anything less than perfect. I would personally support everyone, especially HGVs doing this to create ‘unofficial’ hard shoulders.
The only thing I know about smart motorways are they are dangerous. That I do understand. They were a cheap way to make a motorway four lane from three.
Highway code should say : for drivers of non-HGVs, on a smart motorway, never use lane one.
All drivers should refuse to drive in lane one (the hard shoulder) and leave it empty.
How does updating the Highway Code help the control room when someone doesn’t spot a breakdown so that signs aren’t changed……or a lorry driver that is using a phone so he doesn’t see a broken down vehicle? Deaths will continue to rise.
Exactly how many people does he think read the Highway Code once they’ve got their licence and even if they read it how many actually do what it says. Smart Motorways are simply dangerous, that’s the full and only story and they should never have been allowed and should be scrapped. It was seen as a cheaper way to get the extra capacity needed and like most things done on the cheap its just not fit for purpose! How many more people have to die before the powers that be will hold their hands up.
Have a look at rule 261 -speed limits and you get the true intelegence of highways England it states “drivers must not exceed the maximum speed limit of the vehicle”. Grant chaps is trying to cover up a major issue of wasting taxs payers money and the majority of the changes proposed are a insidious attempt to justify smart motorways.
It will never work if people ignore the red cross/closed lane – simple.
Can anyone help answer something that’s happened to me more than once on a Smart Motorway? Approaching an overhead gantry the speed limit signs suddenly change, say from 60 MPH to 50 MPH. Since these gantries also house speed cameras am I supposed to quickly slam on my brakes to prevent getting a fine (dangerous) or do the cameras wait a short time before enforcing the new, lower speed limit (sensible). I’ve tried finding out (online, government sites, Highway Code) but can’t find anything about this.
Here is the answer: – drivers have 60 seconds to react to a new limit being displayed on a smart motorway overhead gantry before cameras start snapping them for speeding.
The one-minute grace period was confirmed by Highways England, the under-fire operator responsible for smart motorways that have been dubbed ‘death traps’ by MPs and police this week.
My opinion is that mandarins, who sanction these smart motorways, think that a few deaths is acceptable for the benefit of time saved by having another lane ‘on the cheap’. They know the danger but of course can blame the users directly for the errors and even more so when written into The Highway Code. Hands up who has read it ( seen it?) since they passed their test? These motorways make me pretty nervous and if we broke down in the nearside lane my wife could never climb over the barrier to safety with he knee replacements. Cars still breakdown , not so often, but they do and you are at risk if you do.
What is to misunderstand if you break down in a live lane you have nowhere to go and neither do the vehicles behind you. I was on a side road not so long ago, heard a crunch and soon realised I had no gears. I went from speed limit to 5 mph very quickly. I am very glad I was not on a motorway with no hard shoulder at the time. Smart motorways are the very opposite of what they claim to be.
You have to first educate drivers to read or buy / borrow a highway code. Ask any driver when they last bought or read a highway code since passing their driving test!
Presumably Highways England should just print an appropriate prayer in the new edition of the Highways Code, suitable for all religions and languages. It would be more effective than their sanctimonious and moronic advice.
Dear Editor, What happened to my previous comment ?
Most things against have already been said, but I would just like to reitorate the point about disabled drivers or passengers – how on earth are they supposed to get out of the passenger door? This stupid idea should definitely be banned pdq regardless of money already spent – do through good money after bad – listen to those of us who drive, not rely on chauffeurs!!!
Sorry – don’t throw good money after bad (got distracted!)
As usual if in doubt blame the VICTIM
Without continuous space to remove broken down vehicles, and the people, from the active road the level of risk will remain unacceptably high. Surely access is also required by the emergency services in the event of incidents? What may have seemed a smart answer to one problem has simply created another for which the current technology is not adequate. The experiment should end.
What a disgraceful comment to make about motorists educating themselves about SMART motorways. No help to the dead when they only stopped when broken down. Where else do you stop when your car is breaking down?
Phillips should resign after that comment!
So it’s our fault, not the idiot that took away the safety of hard shoulders or failed to monitor stretches or supply even adequate “pull-ins”.
The arrogance of government and civil servants never ceases to amaze me.
If Grant Shapps says a smart motorway is unsafe he should not allow them to be opened until the escape areas are all at the recommended distance apart and all the cameras and supervisors are in place monitoring 24hours a day for stationary vehicles. Until then the lanes should not be opened for traffic.
The idiots who dream up these ridiculous schemes, should be made to travel regularly on their “smart” motorways and experience the stress it puts on drivers fearing they may break down. It is absurd to think that a vehicle suddenly stopping in that lane, can in any way be safe, as however quickly the warning signs are operated, there will inevitably be a delay in stopping the traffic before disaster strikes yet again. You would think that with 44 deaths (it is probably more by now!) on their hands, the fools would get the message that “smart motorways” are certain death traps.
They obviously do not read publications like these which 100% condemn such stupidity!
Why don’t the motoring associations and any major industries connected with vehicles put immense pressure on the government to stop it immediately, or do we have to wait until an MP’s child or relative dies on their creations?
I have been driving for over 60 years and thank God I have retired from my job which as a salesman, meant I spent most of my time on the motorways. This madness had not been invented in those days.