Smart motorway penalty

[Metallfan]

If anyone's interested with he follow-up to my story - here is a reply I got from England Highways (also, it's been almost 2 weeks now and I got no ticket in the mail):

Thank you for contacting the Highways England Customer Contract Centre regarding your journey dated the 18th September 2018 at Dartford Crossing.



You asked why the signs leading up to the tunnels were showing the two right hand lanes as being closed and then the last signal as showing the lanes to be open with a speed limit over them – Lanes 3-4 were closed for a full closure of the East tunnel due to roadworks.

The gantries you passed under with the lane closures on are set by Highways England control room staff but the last gantry that had the speeds on it is owned by Connect Plus Services and they were in the process of setting this to lane closures when you passed underneath it, the signal was counting down with speeds first and then finally sets the lane closures.



With regards to you receiving a penalty, if you didn’t see any of the cameras flash or if the gantry still had speeds on it when you passed underneath it then it should be all clear.

[essayer]

BiggestVern said:

You said that the two right hand lanes had been showing res 'x's then the next gantry showed speeds, this should not happen, I wonder if you crossed from gantries set by Eastern Region into gantries set by DRC and someone was a bit late with the settings.

Winner!

[Metallfan]

essayer said:

Winner!

Seems so, as I never got a penalty in the end!

[saaby93]

coldel said:

Toltec said:

I wondered about that, however since that sign is placed after the road splits it has to be read in advance as you have no option to change lane at it. You need to apply what it says before you reach it if closed so it is not unreasonable to apply it being open before you reach it.

Technically it is a type of race hazard, you cannot turn that sign red on until all of the traffic in that lane between it and the previous gantry has flowed through because the traffic cannot move left as they get close to it. You have to set the previous gantry to red and wait for the intermediate traffic to clear, I suspect the OP was just in that region of time.

Needs an amber left arrow or something to tell you it is about to close and the next set is closed.

Quite a sensible point, that you cannot just switch all to Red Xs there is an expectation that you move over as you see them and stay left. I guess the issue here could be that you do not move back to the right until you pass the gantry? You passed a red X, saw in the distance a speed limit sign so moved over well before passing the gantry. They could argue that you stay out the closed lane until you pass a gantry that says otherwise? Again devils advocate but that could come back against any contesting? Mind you, it might be nothing happens, did the guys that escorted you tell you that you would get a ticket?

This looks like what happened.
They put a speed limit on it first then starting from the back gradually changed them to red Xs
the OP got caught in no man's land as the gantry in front of him changed to a red X so did the right thing, stopped and waited to be rescued
Some people might have ignored the red Xs and carried on through to see if the road was really closed, only to find it wasnt yet closed.
They were only going to close the road once the red Xs had takne effect.

As weve seen in other threads what it needs is some sort of intermediate sign to indicate road closing when its not actually closed
Either the wicket stump advisory signs or the arrow get out of this lane signs.

Dumb motorways

[W124Bob]

I've thought right from the start that a flashing red X should be introduced for a set time, as a warning before going to a steady X. It only needs to be a minute at the 2 preceding gantries .