Smart motorways to be reviewed over driver safety fears

[GK5268]

Nowadays, I avoid motorways like the plague! Everyone using them seems to drive too fast and too close!

Even better, is when cars join the motorway, they just seem to do a single manoeuvre from the slip road directly over to the outside lane, quite oblivious to any traffic! What are they thinking?

[Dave Mann]

How do emergency or recovery vehicles get to a an incident on a smart motorway when there is no hard shoulder? After the introduction of smart meters I now view everything smart as dumb.

[Reckless Rat]

They will just arrange for the hard shoulder to become a closed lane (red cross on the overhead gantry) and then signs prior to the obstruction/closed lane will direct traffic out of the hard shoulder into the adjacent lane (white arrow on the gantry). That will then give them a clear run up the hard shoulder to get to the obstruction.

That works fine until you have a situation where a blockage stops all traffic. Then it's hard to get past all that stationary traffic. The German autobahns quite often do not have a hard shoulder but when there's a hold up the traffic in either lane moves left & right in order to allow emergency vehicles to pass between them. I've seen it and it works.

Some UK drivers are so unaware of what's going off around them that you can be behind them with blues and twos on full blast and they still don't see or hear you.

In days gone by there used to be adverts on the TV telling you what to do and how to drive on the motorway. More education in this respect is well overdue.

My advice is: if you break down on the motorway (smart or otherwise) DO NOT remain in the vehicle. Get out, get your yellow vest on, get yourself and everyone with you over the barrier and up the banking out of the way, because as sure as eggs are eggs some gormless pillock will run into you.

Use the emergency phones, NOT your mobile because that way they can locate you. Some people don't even know which motorway they're on never mind whether they're going north or south. I kid you not. I lost count of the number of times I had my meal disturbed at Woodhall Post M1 north by some numpty wanting to know where the M6 was. They'd missed it 90 miles further south.

[Duncan Grimmond]

As we live in an economy which depends on making selling and driving cars the obvious solution will never be applied. Strangely we had a very efficient transport system which was deliberately destroyed by a transport minister who had strong links with civil engineering, road building in particular.
I know we can't turn the clock back but when the full price of a return train ticket from Harrogate to Kings Cross (£176.00) is almost more than the flight and a week's full board in Marbella off season something is going wrong!

[Chris KC]

I've recently witnessed streams of drivers completely ignoring the 'lane closed' sign so they could razz up the queue on the inside and barge their way into the queue further up the road. I suspect there's a difference in training and mindset between British and German motorway users.

[Tony Griffiths]

As we live in an economy which depends on making selling and driving cars the obvious solution will never be applied. Strangely we had a very efficient transport system which was deliberately destroyed by a transport minister who had strong links with civil engineering, road building in particular.

His name was "You-know-it-makes-sense" Earnest Marples. A real crook; in later life, Marples was elevated to the peerage before fleeing to Monaco at very short notice to avoid prosecution for tax fraud (he makes the last scandal about M.P.s expenses look chicken feed.) For those too young to know about it: "His period as Minister of Transport was controversial. He both oversaw significant road construction (he opened the first section of the M1 motorway) and the closure of a considerable portion of the national railway network with the Beeching cuts. His involvement in the road construction business Marples Ridgway, of which he had been managing director, was one of repeated concern regarding possible conflict of interest. Marples appointed Richard Beeching to head British Railways, who published a report which abandoned more than 4,000 miles of railway lines in the UK with a resulting rise in the amount of road traffic." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Marples

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I've recently witnessed streams of drivers completely ignoring the 'lane closed' sign so they could razz up the queue on the inside and barge their way into the queue further up the road. I suspect there's a difference in training and mindset between British and German motorway users.

Which bring us to an interesting point. On the continent, when two lanes merge into one, both lanes keep running until the convergence point and then go turn by turn, the most effective method of maximising traffic flow. However, in the UK anyone who doesn't get into the "open" lane 10 miles before the pinch point is considered a criminal and might wait a week before being allowed in. Remember those "Public Service" advertisements we used to have that sometimes covered driving, including motorway use? (yes, we're all getting horribly old). It looks like there might a case for bringing them back.

[Chris KC]

Yes, the "zipper" rule. Trouble is here road rules have now descended to "who's going to make me?"

[Nick Salmon]

Driving standards in the UK have deteriorated year on year and will continue to do so. There is nothing going to change that. Unfortunately.

[David Stepney]

Driving standards in the UK have deteriorated year on year and will continue to do so. There is nothing going to change that. Unfortunately.

One way of ensuring that driving standards improve is to make drivers take a competence test every five years.

[Alan]

I don’t think re-testing would help. The offenders in the main aren’t incompetent, they just think they are above the law. Faced with a test situation they’d drive properly.
Interestingly, about 10 years ago when I was researching automobile puncture incidents, I came across an interesting statistic. Your life expectancy on the hard shoulder of a motorway is of the order of 20 minutes. I wonder if the smart motorway planners took this into account.