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Smart Motorways When Technology Fails: Traffic officer says smart motorways not safe as tech keeps failing

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date22 April 2024
Publication titleMyLondon (England)
National Highways denies the claims. England has 193 miles of 'no hard shoulder' smart motorways, 140 miles with a hard shoulder and 63 miles where the hard shoulder can be switched to a running lane. National Highways' figures suggest if you break down on a smart motorway without a hard shoulder you are three times more likely to be killed or seriously injured

Smart motorways use cameras and radar to detect broken-down vehicles in the carriageway. Figures released to Panorama show that between June 2022 and February 2024 there were 397 incidents when smart motorways lost power, making it difficult to detect when a vehicle has broken down. The outages sometimes lasted days.

Edmund King, president of the AA, told the BBC: "If you haven't got that technology, it's not even a basic motorway because you haven't got the hard shoulder," he says. "It means that you're playing Russian roulette with people's lives."

National Highways' figures show that in 2022 there were also 2,331 faults on the radar system...

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