Are Smart Motorways Dangerous?
Discussion
Hard shoulders on all motorways with the option to open them up.
Less is more. Too much information at critical junctions.
You got 5 lanes going into 3 different directions at the M3-M25 junctions. Not only have you got to get in the correct lane you might have a 60 flash up that then drops to 40. Plus keeping eyes all over the place. It might be better to just have a blanket 50mph set with average speed cameras through that section. As a local I can steam through at 70 I know exactly what one to get in so can keep my eyes on the road rather than worry about what lane to get in plus having to contend with speed changes plus the odd stranded vehicle plus crazy van/taxi drivers/HGV drivers on your bumper etc etc.
Less is more. Too much information at critical junctions.
You got 5 lanes going into 3 different directions at the M3-M25 junctions. Not only have you got to get in the correct lane you might have a 60 flash up that then drops to 40. Plus keeping eyes all over the place. It might be better to just have a blanket 50mph set with average speed cameras through that section. As a local I can steam through at 70 I know exactly what one to get in so can keep my eyes on the road rather than worry about what lane to get in plus having to contend with speed changes plus the odd stranded vehicle plus crazy van/taxi drivers/HGV drivers on your bumper etc etc.
Aiminghigh123 said:
Hard shoulders on all motorways with the option to open them up.
Less is more. Too much information at critical junctions.
You got 5 lanes going into 3 different directions at the M3-M25 junctions. Not only have you got to get in the correct lane you might have a 60 flash up that then drops to 40. Plus keeping eyes all over the place. It might be better to just have a blanket 50mph set with average speed cameras through that section. As a local I can steam through at 70 I know exactly what one to get in so can keep my eyes on the road rather than worry about what lane to get in plus having to contend with speed changes plus the odd stranded vehicle plus crazy van/taxi drivers/HGV drivers on your bumper etc etc.
Well going from the M25 onto the M3 in either direction there is a 50mph average limit with cameras already! Less is more. Too much information at critical junctions.
You got 5 lanes going into 3 different directions at the M3-M25 junctions. Not only have you got to get in the correct lane you might have a 60 flash up that then drops to 40. Plus keeping eyes all over the place. It might be better to just have a blanket 50mph set with average speed cameras through that section. As a local I can steam through at 70 I know exactly what one to get in so can keep my eyes on the road rather than worry about what lane to get in plus having to contend with speed changes plus the odd stranded vehicle plus crazy van/taxi drivers/HGV drivers on your bumper etc etc.
And in over 5 years of going from the M3 Northbound onto the M25 anti-clockwise I only ever found an almost stationary queue even at 3 in the afternoon, despite the gantries showing a 50 limit! That usually went back to N/S/L after J11, so congestion caused by the "smartness" of these stupid ideas. The only time it worked properly was last Christmas Day - hopefully those who f*ck it up for a living were somewhere else!
I don't even bother going that way any more - A331 to A31 to A3 is always quicker than M3 to M25 to A3. But that does seem to suggest Motorways are becoming the slower option, which wasn't exactly what they were intended to be.
And as "Smart" as the M3 may be now, I really wouldn't want to have to stop in a live lane - which they all are now!
Just a cheap-skate solution that doesn't take safety into account IMHO.
Still, looking on the bright side it only took about 4 years to turn the M3 into the mess it is now!
Edited by Mr Tidy on Thursday 13th June 00:35
Wacky Racer said:
Of course they are dangerous.
You are driving your car with your wife and three very young children in the back, your engine goes bang/you have a blowout/run out of petrol, you have no hard shoulder to pull onto with HGV's thundering up behind you at 50mph.
Only a matter of time before there is going to be a terrible disaster resulting in massive loss of life.
It's heartening to see there is someone on this forum with perception of what can happen to any vehicle driver on any motorway that does not have a hard shoulder refuge. Thousands of other sensible drivers are not accepting what is drivel from those who say it is safe.You are driving your car with your wife and three very young children in the back, your engine goes bang/you have a blowout/run out of petrol, you have no hard shoulder to pull onto with HGV's thundering up behind you at 50mph.
Only a matter of time before there is going to be a terrible disaster resulting in massive loss of life.
It is paramount to driver safety to revoke what has been deemed to be safe by those who designed the anomaly of the ALR motorways-well they would wouldn't they? They also said speed cameras were for road safety only which was the and is now bullshine.
Mick50NCD said:
Wacky Racer said:
Of course they are dangerous.
You are driving your car with your wife and three very young children in the back, your engine goes bang/you have a blowout/run out of petrol, you have no hard shoulder to pull onto with HGV's thundering up behind you at 50mph.
Only a matter of time before there is going to be a terrible disaster resulting in massive loss of life.
It's heartening to see there is someone on this forum with perception of what can happen to any vehicle driver on any motorway that does not have a hard shoulder refuge. Thousands of other sensible drivers are not accepting what is drivel from those who say it is safe.You are driving your car with your wife and three very young children in the back, your engine goes bang/you have a blowout/run out of petrol, you have no hard shoulder to pull onto with HGV's thundering up behind you at 50mph.
Only a matter of time before there is going to be a terrible disaster resulting in massive loss of life.
It is paramount to driver safety to revoke what has been deemed to be safe by those who designed the anomaly of the ALR motorways-well they would wouldn't they? They also said speed cameras were for road safety only which was the and is now bullshine.
It's not the roads that are dangerous, it's the people who use them.
Just a thought, could SMART motorways be safer simply because they appear to be more dangerous? You know there is no run-off, so you should drive according to the conditions. How many people do you see tail-gating at NSL on an A-road? The speeds are similar, but the risk is very high. If the risk on a Smart motorway were thought to be the same as an A-road, they may be safer.
Personally, I feel a sense of danger when I am on a Smart motorway - this could be a good thing? Is it making me a better driver, because I am concentrating more, or a poorer driver, because I am more nervous?
pingu393 said:
How many people do you see tail-gating at NSL on an A-road? The speeds are similar, but the risk is very high. If the risk on a Smart motorway were thought to be the same as an A-road, they may be safer.
Every single time I go anywhere I see vehicles tailgating on a-roads. Not one person seems to have any concept of leaving a safe braking distance any more. It's now the case that its rarer to have a vehicle behind keeping a safe distance than it is to be tailgated.JimSuperSix said:
pingu393 said:
How many people do you see tail-gating at NSL on an A-road? The speeds are similar, but the risk is very high. If the risk on a Smart motorway were thought to be the same as an A-road, they may be safer.
Every single time I go anywhere I see vehicles tailgating on a-roads. Not one person seems to have any concept of leaving a safe braking distance any more. It's now the case that its rarer to have a vehicle behind keeping a safe distance than it is to be tailgated.pingu393 said:
anonymous said:
[redacted]
The "danger" in this example is that those with local knowledge know the gantries with cameras and exceed the limit, everyone else assumes that every gantry has a camera.I see this around M1 Jct 26 every day.
Locals lift off for the camera gantries and the "foreigners" don't and then have to brake when they realise the gap to the local in front is decreasing.
Then at the next non-camera gantry, the "foreigner" thinks that the same will happen and lifts off, but the local doesn't. The "foreigner" now has a bigger gap to close and hoofs it, only to find the next gantry is a camera gantry and he has to stand ond on his brakes when the local lifts off.
Until every gantry has a camera, SMART motorways won't work.
Way back in the 70's the then Cheif Constable of Northampton, John Gott , condemned the 70 mph speed limit on the motorway as it caused far too much bunching . This was after a couple of huge accidents on the M1 one near jct 11/12 and one near jct 13 .
The bunching and lack of lane discipline on motorways seems to be a bigger problem in the UK. Our driving standards over the last 30 years have certainly fallen much lower than in many areas of Europe.
The bunching and lack of lane discipline on motorways seems to be a bigger problem in the UK. Our driving standards over the last 30 years have certainly fallen much lower than in many areas of Europe.
I broke down on the M62 the other day (I won't go on a rant about my own incompetence here) and was in the outside lane. The M62 is being turned slowly into a smart motorway and currently has no hard shoulder. No power, big red light telling me to pull over immediately. Terrific. Weaved my way quickly over to lane 1 and just happened to be the perfect distance to sit in a site entrance that consumed the hard shoulder. Mercifully, there wasn't any work or workers in this section between the slip roads on and off the M62. So I called my breakdown team who had terrible trouble locating me and promptly sent out a recovery truck. 10 minutes later, said recovery truck cruised right on past and called me to advise they can't pick me up from the roadworks and I'll have to wait for Highways England to send someone out. 10 minutes after that Egertons arrived and proceeded to play vehicle Tetris to get the recovery vehicle in front of mine because they're not allowed to move the cones that are behind a crash barrier, on the grass, for 2 minutes. Then I was recovered further away from work than I was when I broke down. Lovely. The call handler at my breakdown company advised me to jump over the crash barrier, this would've left me stood in lane 1, I decided it was probably best to not do that..
The immediate panic on a motorway that has no hard shoulder is quite jarring and it's not something I'd wish to do again. Watching lorries thunder past while stood a good 20 feet from the lane was scary enough!
The immediate panic on a motorway that has no hard shoulder is quite jarring and it's not something I'd wish to do again. Watching lorries thunder past while stood a good 20 feet from the lane was scary enough!
The answer to the question is yes, yes they are. As, potentially, are all roads. And cars. And drivers.
Are they more dangerous than a normal motorway, mile-for-mile, or a dual-carriageway, or an A / B road?
There are around 3000 people killed and seriously injured (KSI) every year on UK roads and smart motorways, whatever the results of the DfT's study, will account for a fraction of those I would think.
I would also imagine there will be no more per-mile or per-minute KSI on smart motorways than on other motorways - however I wouldn't be surprised if there is not be enough data yet on relatively new smart motorways to make a statistically significant judgement here.
There was a comment about incidents / injuries going down but deaths going up - again, it'll be interesting to see what the study says about this because it's a very real possibility that this will happen but it will be difficult to pin causation on a smart motorway.
This is clearly a very emotive topic as a the mind's eye can well picture ourselves or our loved ones stranded in L1 with an artic bearing down, but I would hope that the data will clarify once and for all.
It's odd actually that the DfT even needs to carry out a study, KSI figures are collected and submitted, if not collated, on a regular basis. And Highways England must know where was "smart" at any given time. So I would hope that this will take a relatively short amount of time to bear results...
Are they more dangerous than a normal motorway, mile-for-mile, or a dual-carriageway, or an A / B road?
There are around 3000 people killed and seriously injured (KSI) every year on UK roads and smart motorways, whatever the results of the DfT's study, will account for a fraction of those I would think.
I would also imagine there will be no more per-mile or per-minute KSI on smart motorways than on other motorways - however I wouldn't be surprised if there is not be enough data yet on relatively new smart motorways to make a statistically significant judgement here.
There was a comment about incidents / injuries going down but deaths going up - again, it'll be interesting to see what the study says about this because it's a very real possibility that this will happen but it will be difficult to pin causation on a smart motorway.
This is clearly a very emotive topic as a the mind's eye can well picture ourselves or our loved ones stranded in L1 with an artic bearing down, but I would hope that the data will clarify once and for all.
It's odd actually that the DfT even needs to carry out a study, KSI figures are collected and submitted, if not collated, on a regular basis. And Highways England must know where was "smart" at any given time. So I would hope that this will take a relatively short amount of time to bear results...
echazfraz said:
The answer to the question is yes, yes they are. As, potentially, are all roads. And cars. And drivers.
Are they more dangerous than a normal motorway, mile-for-mile, or a dual-carriageway, or an A / B road?
There are around 3000 people killed and seriously injured (KSI) every year on UK roads and smart motorways, whatever the results of the DfT's study, will account for a fraction of those I would think.
I would also imagine there will be no more per-mile or per-minute KSI on smart motorways than on other motorways - however I wouldn't be surprised if there is not be enough data yet on relatively new smart motorways to make a statistically significant judgement here.
There was a comment about incidents / injuries going down but deaths going up - again, it'll be interesting to see what the study says about this because it's a very real possibility that this will happen but it will be difficult to pin causation on a smart motorway.
This is clearly a very emotive topic as a the mind's eye can well picture ourselves or our loved ones stranded in L1 with an artic bearing down, but I would hope that the data will clarify once and for all.
It's odd actually that the DfT even needs to carry out a study, KSI figures are collected and submitted, if not collated, on a regular basis. And Highways England must know where was "smart" at any given time. So I would hope that this will take a relatively short amount of time to bear results...
You might want to read the BBC link I posted to earlier. A lot of the conjecture has been put to bed.Are they more dangerous than a normal motorway, mile-for-mile, or a dual-carriageway, or an A / B road?
There are around 3000 people killed and seriously injured (KSI) every year on UK roads and smart motorways, whatever the results of the DfT's study, will account for a fraction of those I would think.
I would also imagine there will be no more per-mile or per-minute KSI on smart motorways than on other motorways - however I wouldn't be surprised if there is not be enough data yet on relatively new smart motorways to make a statistically significant judgement here.
There was a comment about incidents / injuries going down but deaths going up - again, it'll be interesting to see what the study says about this because it's a very real possibility that this will happen but it will be difficult to pin causation on a smart motorway.
This is clearly a very emotive topic as a the mind's eye can well picture ourselves or our loved ones stranded in L1 with an artic bearing down, but I would hope that the data will clarify once and for all.
It's odd actually that the DfT even needs to carry out a study, KSI figures are collected and submitted, if not collated, on a regular basis. And Highways England must know where was "smart" at any given time. So I would hope that this will take a relatively short amount of time to bear results...
grumpy52 said:
Way back in the 70's the then Cheif Constable of Northampton, John Gott , condemned the 70 mph speed limit on the motorway as it caused far too much bunching . This was after a couple of huge accidents on the M1 one near jct 11/12 and one near jct 13 .
The bunching and lack of lane discipline on motorways seems to be a bigger problem in the UK. Our driving standards over the last 30 years have certainly fallen much lower than in many areas of Europe.
Tell that to Transport Scotland and their ever-increasing specs on national trunk roads. The bunching and lack of lane discipline on motorways seems to be a bigger problem in the UK. Our driving standards over the last 30 years have certainly fallen much lower than in many areas of Europe.
I have never felt more exposed to danger in the little clumps of cars that all seem to agglomerate at 70mph +/- 0.5mph. Massive, empty road and groups of cars all bunched together.
Without the specs, we were all more spaced out.
Digga said:
echazfraz said:
The answer to the question is yes, yes they are. As, potentially, are all roads. And cars. And drivers.
Are they more dangerous than a normal motorway, mile-for-mile, or a dual-carriageway, or an A / B road?
There are around 3000 people killed and seriously injured (KSI) every year on UK roads and smart motorways, whatever the results of the DfT's study, will account for a fraction of those I would think.
I would also imagine there will be no more per-mile or per-minute KSI on smart motorways than on other motorways - however I wouldn't be surprised if there is not be enough data yet on relatively new smart motorways to make a statistically significant judgement here.
There was a comment about incidents / injuries going down but deaths going up - again, it'll be interesting to see what the study says about this because it's a very real possibility that this will happen but it will be difficult to pin causation on a smart motorway.
This is clearly a very emotive topic as a the mind's eye can well picture ourselves or our loved ones stranded in L1 with an artic bearing down, but I would hope that the data will clarify once and for all.
It's odd actually that the DfT even needs to carry out a study, KSI figures are collected and submitted, if not collated, on a regular basis. And Highways England must know where was "smart" at any given time. So I would hope that this will take a relatively short amount of time to bear results...
You might want to read the BBC link I posted to earlier. A lot of the conjecture has been put to bed.Are they more dangerous than a normal motorway, mile-for-mile, or a dual-carriageway, or an A / B road?
There are around 3000 people killed and seriously injured (KSI) every year on UK roads and smart motorways, whatever the results of the DfT's study, will account for a fraction of those I would think.
I would also imagine there will be no more per-mile or per-minute KSI on smart motorways than on other motorways - however I wouldn't be surprised if there is not be enough data yet on relatively new smart motorways to make a statistically significant judgement here.
There was a comment about incidents / injuries going down but deaths going up - again, it'll be interesting to see what the study says about this because it's a very real possibility that this will happen but it will be difficult to pin causation on a smart motorway.
This is clearly a very emotive topic as a the mind's eye can well picture ourselves or our loved ones stranded in L1 with an artic bearing down, but I would hope that the data will clarify once and for all.
It's odd actually that the DfT even needs to carry out a study, KSI figures are collected and submitted, if not collated, on a regular basis. And Highways England must know where was "smart" at any given time. So I would hope that this will take a relatively short amount of time to bear results...
It's the head of HE giving some platitudes to a Select Committee, unless I've missed something, which on mobile I may have.
Pica-Pica said:
Digga said:
BBC said:
Dynamic smart motorways 'too confusing', says highways boss
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-50159162However, I'd agree with the claim that smart motorways are far, far too confusing and dangerous.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/11/crime-...
Seems using the Hard Shoulder as a live lane can mean it takes longer for the Emergency Services to reach the scene of accidents.
Is the time taken to reach and treat those who've experienced an injury on the roads referred to as 'Golden Seconds'?
Seems using the Hard Shoulder as a live lane can mean it takes longer for the Emergency Services to reach the scene of accidents.
Is the time taken to reach and treat those who've experienced an injury on the roads referred to as 'Golden Seconds'?
Last January I purchased a jap import, at the time we had a 2 month old baby (the day van import was for the babies benefit)
Anyway I picked it up early jan, used it for a week or two solo, to make sure it was safe etc - all seemed safe enough and reliable enough for my new family
Planned for a day out somewhere, bit of a seaside or whatever, i filled it up the night before
Joined the m27 cruising along just fine, then realised I was slowing down. The bloody thing had konked out. Rolled to a stop, had a combination of morons not spotting us stopped, was a scary experience. Turns out it was simply just the pressure relief valve on the fuel cap
You can imagine my disappointment when my wife says she will never go in the bloody thing again
If there been a hard shoulder we’d have been a lot safer in my view.
Thankfully no lasting damage, but it’s scary look8ng out the back window watching people only notice you a bit late
Jap import sold shortly afterwards
Anyway I picked it up early jan, used it for a week or two solo, to make sure it was safe etc - all seemed safe enough and reliable enough for my new family
Planned for a day out somewhere, bit of a seaside or whatever, i filled it up the night before
Joined the m27 cruising along just fine, then realised I was slowing down. The bloody thing had konked out. Rolled to a stop, had a combination of morons not spotting us stopped, was a scary experience. Turns out it was simply just the pressure relief valve on the fuel cap
You can imagine my disappointment when my wife says she will never go in the bloody thing again
If there been a hard shoulder we’d have been a lot safer in my view.
Thankfully no lasting damage, but it’s scary look8ng out the back window watching people only notice you a bit late
Jap import sold shortly afterwards
Never assume you are safe on the hard shoulder, it takes just one errant artic driver to drift out of their lane (which some seem to do with alarming regularity) and you're demolished.
As for the emergency services not having acces via hard shoulders turned into live lanes, it was clear to anyone with a brain that this was an inevitable, unintended consequence.
As for the emergency services not having acces via hard shoulders turned into live lanes, it was clear to anyone with a brain that this was an inevitable, unintended consequence.
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