"Smart motorways" - or are they?

Like all drivers who occasionally have to use motorways I have been concerned by what I hear about the accident rates on so-called "Smart Motorways" and particularly the "Dynamic" kind where the same lane is sometimes a hard shoulder and sometimes an active lane.

I've had the experience of breaking down at midnight on a section of the M6 without streetlights or a hard shoulder and not being able to get the car onto a refuge. I and my passenger had to get out, get on the other side of the barrier, and call the police - and I was convinced that the car was going to be flattened before they got there. Fortunately for everyone concerned we got out and behind the barrier safely and the police arrived before any of the HGVs which were passing at 70mph converted my car into metal splinters.

It was, however, an extremely frightening experience and I must confess I have never been so glad to see a police car in the whole of my time as a motorist.

Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Transport has, in my opinion done exactly the right thing by setting up an inquiry, to look at the evidence and report urgently with recommendations, into the safety of these systems for managing motorways to establish which is the safest form of motorway and what can be done to make the travelling public as safe as possible.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more