Smart motorways

[Charles Levien]

For those of us who do a serious cross country trip it’s difficult to totally avoid a motorway and sometimes a short motorway section can be very useful in joining up  a route comprised mainly of A roads etc.
My view, in the past, has been that motorways are fine if you can maintain around 50 mph and keep a watchful eye on the rear view mirror — the emergency lane is an essential bolt hole if something goes wrong.
Now this might change if these so called smart motorways become popular ie the emergency lane becomes part of the regular motorway. I guess it may become important to have this in mind when planning a cross country route. 
I should be interested to know what other Seveners think?

[Chris KC]

Discussed a while back Charles, here: https://www.austinsevenfriends.co.uk/for...s#pid36369

I note they are still building the darn things and some authorities still seem to be planning them - with more refuges perhaps?

Bloody lethal in my opinion, even in the 'modern' (if I may call it that - 2001!) I decline to use the hard shoulder and stick in lane 2.

[David Stepney]

Despite Grant Shapps' announcement today that he is going to discontinue the use of 'dynamic' hard houdlers (i.e. part time ones) on so called smart motorways and provide more refuges at not more than 3/4 mile apart on motorways that do not effectively have one, I still think that motorways are bl**dy dangerous places and tend to avoid them even when I was running my Porsche. I would never think of taking the Seven along one, even for a short distance. Finding alternative routes is easy and you usually have the more interesting roads to yourself.

[Hugh Barnes]

I gave this a lot of thought last summer when I went to Guildtown for the Scottish Rally. I had a 1000 mile round trip to consider and being on the east of the country to start with, the A1(M) was hard to avoid. However, some close examination of 'zoomed in' Google maps revealed many miles of the 'old' A1 that ran alongside the M version of the road. These stretches turned out to be a delight - wide roads with good surfaces and almost no traffic save the odd local car or tractor.

There were areas however, where I couldn't avoid the M version and for those sections, I made a small bracket for the back of the cabriolet (that mounted above the original pork pie rear lamp) and mounted a rear bicycle lamp that gave an 'asymmetric' flash pattern with the occasional (every 5 seconds?) really high intensity flash. This was so bright, I deemed it inappropriate to use at night for fear of blinding a following driver.

This approach appeared to work really well and caught the attention of drivers overhauling me and I would see them pull out to overtake a 1/4 mile before they reached me. This was comforting and felt much better that seeing the rad of an HGV looming up in the rear view mirror. This is the lamp if it is of interest..

https://www.evanscycles.com/lezyne-zecto...n-EV313609

Though it has to be said, I will still avoid such roads if and where I can, I realise *I* am the problem, not the other road users sticking to that road's usual speeds...

[Dave Mann]

I view anything labelled smart as dumb, smart meters are really dumb when you switch suppliers, smart phones which encourage users to do dumb things like stepping off the kerb without looking, etc.

[spannerman]

As far as I know they are not inpermenting
Them as there as been 5 deaths due to the
Hard shoulder been used as a Lane and leaving
No place to go in a breakedown !

[andrew34ruby]

On Panorama they said 38 deaths due to no hard shoulder on 'smart' motorways. I'd like to avoid them altogether even in a 'modern'. When planning a journey how do we know which roads to avoid?

[Charles Levien]

Interesting comments from all — seems to be a consensus that M roads are best avoided if another reasonable route is available.
I don’t think we should be afraid of occasional forays onto motorways if weather conditions are good and it really makes sense in terms of route finding. I’m possibly in a minority here!
Getting back from Yorkshire to Norfolk last year in a downpour was quite challenging — we looked at the alternative to the A1M ( which we had taken going North) but opted for a return straight down the A1 as the weather was so bad it wouldn’t have been easier taking minor roads. The key thing is really good lights, in my case all LEDs, an additional reflective surface on the back and plenty of strong coffee. Oh, and I should add - a passenger who keeps happy when she can’t see a dickey bird through the windscreen.

[Parazine]

In the Seventies, we used the motorways regularly. Lorries overtook us on the way down the hills, we passed them going up! In the Nineties, I drove several times in a Chummy from Reading to Lynton, using the M4, M5 and A361 North Devon link road.

These days, especially with "Smart" motorways, I avoid them at all costs - with Mr Sales Rep in his BMW, Audi or Mercedes and no idea about small slow traffic, not to mention the 40 tonners, it's a death lottery.
Even dual carriageways are bad news, "B" roads for me!

[Bruce Nicholls]

The greatest change I can see on motorways, smart or not, is that the lorries are more numerous and can all do and sustain 70 mph. Best avoided in a seven I think.