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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Great article on a subject that needs fighting. My fear is the powers that be have the last say and they have no reason to listen to the public. I have been close to taking out a mother with her two young children on the M6 when she had a blowout in a 4 lane no hard shoulder area. I was in an artic with a full load of fruit juice cartoons on board. I hit the brakes to avoid her and very near lost control of the truck in doing so. I don’t know what happened to her. I live in fear of hitting someone and NEVER use inside lane when there is no hard shoulder. Whilst that might be wrong I’m waiting to give way to anyone needing to pull over from lane one.
We need people like you to push your views forward.
Thanks
Smart motorways should NEVER have been implemented .A vehicle isn’t “smart” and will fail when it wants to .To tell drivers to go to the nearest refuge is ridiculous. Bring back the “Hard Shoulder” for safety’s sake.