The DEATH of the hard shoulder

Adriana1985

Even prior to reading the below article, I could not understand how eliminating the hard shoulder is a good thing. I've driven enough around English motorways to know people seldom follow the speed limit, let alone closed lane signals, and not having a hard shoulder is almost a death sentence for someone who has simply broken down without spinning off the road.

Thoughts? 

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/chief-constable-warned-ministers-coroners-161413661.html

Grumpy_chap

So, if all-lane-running smart motorways are a bad thing, as per the article, that is the kiss-of-life for hard shoulder, not their death knell.

facade

I think the point is Highways England are continuing to implement them, and will carry on until there is enough Scientific Evidence ( i.e. avoidable deaths) to support what Common Sense suggested in the first place.

(Sound familiar?)

Supersonos

Don't worry - considering everyone and their mother sees fit to drive in the middle lane, lane 1 has become the new hard shoulder.  It's probably the safest place on a motorway.

Ectophile

If you break down on the inside lane of a "smart" motorway, then you should get everybody out of the car and over the crash barrier as quickly as possible.

I've had a near miss on a section of the M25 converted to all lane running, without the safety systems in place.  I was in lane 2, about to overtake a car in lane 1.  Suddenly, the car swerved in front of me, forcing me to suddenly swerve in front of the vehicle in lane 3.

There was a car broken down in lane 1.  There were no automatic warning signs, as there were supposed to have been, because Highways England hadn't bothered to install them.

peter_the_piper

Smart Motorways! Never was there a more incorrect name for a road.

NottinghamKnight

The advice is to get out of the car and stay over the barrier even where there is a hard shoulder of course. 

MX5huggy

The first section of “smart” motorway had refuge lay-bys every 400m latest specification is every 2.2km. Value engineered to be dangerous. 

clive0510

the stretch of the m4 by reading services, that they are converting to smart motorway has been going on now for about 3 yrs. by the time its finished someone will have invented something else, making it a waste of time.

Supersonos

Ectophile said:

There were no automatic warning signs, 

People ignore these anyway as nine times out of ten they warn of a problem that isn't there.

AdrianC

NottinghamKnight said:

The advice is to get out of the car and stay over the barrier even where there is a hard shoulder of course. 

This bit ^^^
HC275 - leave the vehicle by the left-hand door and ensure your passengers do the same... return and wait near your vehicle (well away from the carriageway and hard shoulder)

If somebody is killed while sitting in a broken-down car on a smart motorway, they've failed to do the single most basic thing to protect themselves.

There were 38 deaths on smart motorways between 2014 and 2019. There were 107 deaths on the motorway network in 2018, and 99 in 2017. That's from all causes, not just stationary vehicles being hit... So let's call smart motorway deaths about 7.5% of all motorway deaths, if we assume 500 over that 5yr period.

Yet smart motorways are now up to about 15% of the motorway network - and they're the busiest stretches, the ones you'd expect to have more serious collisions...

Smart motorways have one job, and one job only - to increase traffic flow. They do that by increasing the number of lanes. There is rarely an option to widen the carriageway - because it's usually already been done to the maximum available width. Perhaps if people actually used motorway lanes properly, we'd get more traffic down the current lanes?