Smart motorways are to be scrutinised by MPs as the Transport Select Committee launches an inquiry into the controversial roads.
The benefits and safety will be investigated, along with their impact on reducing congestion.
The inquiry comes after some campaigners labelled them ‘death traps’ and a coroner concluded they ‘present an ongoing risk of future deaths‘.
Highways England, which oversees the UK’s strategic road network, has also been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider if corporate manslaughter charges are appropriate.
Transport Committee chair Huw Merriman MP said there are “genuine worries about this element of the motorway network and we want to investigate how we go to this point”.
Last year, transport secretary Grant Shapps responded to safety concerns with a series of 18 measures to improve confidence in smart motorways.
These include abolishing confusing ‘dynamic hard shoulder’ smart motorways, where the hard shoulder is present only part-time, by 2025. More emergency refuge areas are also planned.
There will also be a publicity campaign to improve motorists’ understanding and awareness of smart motorways.
Mr Shapps has since acknowledged that smart motorways should be safer.
‘Very timely’
AA president Edmund King welcomed the inquiry. ‘Coroners, and indeed police and crime commissioners, have voiced serious safety concerns with ‘smart’ motorways, which makes this inquiry very timely.
“For more than a decade, the AA has campaigned to improve the safety of smart motorways. Tragically, too many people have died on these roads in the interim.
“Hopefully, this inquiry will concentrate minds to stress the urgency of safety improvements.”
RAC head of roads policy Nicholas Lyes pointed to the “increasing level of concern around the safety of smart motorways, from the driving public through to Westminster”.
There are currently a number of initiatives underway to improve smart motorway safety, which will take several years to complete.
“But even when all these issues are addressed, we wonder whether they will go far enough to overcome people’s fears.”
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