UK motorway hard shoulder rules could be 'abolished' due to pressure

Smart motorways could be "abolished" after the AA spoke out to highlight "serious safety concerns". The AA has called on the Department for Transport to make changes amid sweeping concerns over the safety of smart motorways across the UK.

The AA released a 'Motoring Manifesto' on Monday morning which explained: “From the outset, The AA has raised serious safety concerns about ‘smart’ motorways. Despite efforts to retrofit safety features at great expense (£900m), we supported the decision to stop new smart motorways, but believe that the hard shoulder should be reinstated on existing smart motorway schemes using dynamic hard shoulder technology.

“Congestion benefits of smart motorways are currently lost as more than one-third of drivers don’t use the inside lane due to fear of broken-down vehicles ahead and any incident leads to severe congestion and delays for emergency services getting to the scene of crashes.

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“Reinstatement should come with the instigation of strict lane discipline campaigns to maintain capacity.” 81 per cent of road users would like to see All Lane running smart motorways scrapped, data from the AA has also found.

The RAC’s head of policy, Simon Williams, said: “There is a real irony when it comes to talking about cost pressures in relation to these distinctly unpopular types of motorway. While heralded as a cost-effective way of increasing capacity on some of our busier roads, a colossal amount of public money has since gone into trying to make them safer – for instance by installing radar-based technology to detect stricken vehicles more quickly, plus the creation of additional emergency refuge areas.

“This cash needn’t have been spent. The government ploughed on with building all-lane running motorways, regardless of concerns expressed by drivers, the RAC and even the [House of Commons] transport committee. We continue to believe that the government should either convert existing all-lane running smart motorways to dynamic ones – where the hard shoulder is only opened to traffic during busy periods – or repaint the white line and reintroduce a permanent hard shoulder on these roads.

“In either case, queue-busting technology such as variable speed limits could remain to help ensure traffic flows as smoothly as possible.” A Department for Transport spokesperson said: “While smart motorways are statistically among the safest roads on our network, we recognise the need for the public to feel safe when driving, and have cancelled plans for all new smart motorway schemes.

“We are also investing £900m to make improvements on existing smart motorways, including building more emergency areas on these roads.”