The department of transport created "smart' motorways where the inner lanes which were  previous hardshoulders were converted to standard motorway lanes, the excuse being to increase the motorways' capacity.

in consequence if a vehicle breaks down or has to make an emergency stop for any reason, then its highly likely to be hit by a vehicle, such as a lorry going at a high speed, behind them. 

Previously, by going onto the hard shoulder they could avoid being hit and then call for help, either using their mobile or with many hard shoulders having periodic emergency phones.   Also the passengers would then step over the crash barriers off the road to avoid being hit.  

"Smart" motorways have removed the hard shoulders and have depended upon broken down vehicles being beside emergency laybys provided about everymile where they can stop and call for help.

But the difficulty is that any vehicle which breaks down or stops before it gets to the emergency laybys can be hit by a vehicle driven in the carriageway behind them and the occupants are highly likely to be killed.   A number of people have already been killed because of this.  Also if more than one vehicle breaks down every mile then there is unlikely to be room for them at the emergency layby.

Also being in an active motorway lane makes it much harder for the occupants to get out of their car and over the crash barrier.

Another benefit of a hard shoulder also enables emergency vehicles to be able to get through to an incident which causes all the motorway carriageways to be blocked.

A typical example is the M4 where the first section leading from London towards Reading is a smart motorway with increased risk and the remainder, leading towards the Severn Bridge into Wales has a standard hard shoulder.  The traffic flow on the second part of the M4 is about the same as in the first half which undemines the argument that Smart Motorways are designed to improve traffic flow.    If a vehicle is hit on the inner lane then it may result in more accidents and increased motorway disruption and reduced traffic flow.

The lack of hard shoulders increases the likelihood of people being killed and the number of motorway incidents.

Reinstating hard shoulders would just involve painting a solid white line along the outside of it and providing a sign saying not to drive on the hard shoulder.  .

If you agree with this please sign the petition to the minister for transport to have the hard shoulders reinstated on all motorways, in order to reduce the likelihood of people being killed if their car breaks down or runs out of fuel or electricity.

 

 

 

 

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