Smart motorways: What are they and why are some people against them?

National World - LocalTV

Andrew Page-Dove from National Highways said: “Safety is our highest priority and our motorways are statistically some of the safest in the world, but there is still work to do.”

Transcript

00:00 Anybody that I met after that point thought that,

00:04 even thought they knew what a smart motorway was,

00:07 thought it was to do with fines and traffic cameras and closed lanes.

00:11 They didn't realise, because the lane was still physically there,

00:14 they didn't realise that its purpose had changed, you know, a lot of them,

00:18 and it never occurred to them.

00:20 And hundreds of thousands of people use the motorway network a day.

00:23 Even if 0.05% of them have an issue,

00:28 there's still a lot of people that have a reason to stop on a smart motorway.

00:33 From everything, from vehicle breakdowns to health emergencies,

00:38 even, I mean, the number of drivers that have contacted me

00:41 saying they became sick while driving.

00:43 You've said that you've had a lot of people who are,

00:45 who don't even know what a smart motorway is.

00:47 Perhaps we could start there and say,

00:50 tell us what a smart motorway is, and then tell us

00:52 what are your sort of major gripes with them?

00:54 Why are you against them?

00:56 Well, there's three types of smart motorway.

00:58 There's controlled, which has a hard shoulder all the time, and technology.

01:02 I have got no problems with that. That's fine.

01:05 Then there's a dynamic smart motorway,

01:07 which sometimes the hard shoulder is a hard shoulder,

01:10 and sometimes it's a live running lane.

01:12 The main problem with a dynamic is that it looks exactly the same

01:16 as a controlled or conventional smart motorway.

01:19 You can't tell the difference by just looking at it.

01:21 And at no other time on our roads are you meant to cross

01:25 a white solid line, but suddenly on a dynamic,

01:29 you're meant to know when the lane is open and closed

01:31 and when you can and can't cross it,

01:33 but you don't know if you're on one or not.

01:35 So obviously that's confusing and dangerous.

01:38 And then you've got all lane running, which never has a hard shoulder.

01:41 So it's got four lanes of live running traffic

01:44 and crash barriers all down the side,

01:46 which is why you can't then, you can't even get your vehicle

01:48 off the road if there's a problem.

01:50 You rely on your vehicle breaking down at a refuge area.

01:54 Chances of you being able to break down at a refuge area are swim to none.

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