South Yorkshire PCC urges Transport Secretary to scrap smart motorways
It's after a coroner raised concerns about the deaths of two men on the M1
South Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner’s written to the Transport Secretary calling for smart motorways without a hard shoulder to be scrapped
Earlier this week a coroner said the lack of somewhere safe to stop contributed to the deaths of two men on the M1 near Meadowall in 2019.
It's now led to PCC Alan Billings writing to Grant Shapps calling all-lane running motorways “inherently unsafe".
In the open letter he says:
"I believe smart motorways of this kind – where what would be a hard shoulder is a live lane with occasional refuges – are inherently unsafe and dangerous and should be abandoned.
"This is a view we have consistently held in South Yorkshire and a previous Chief Constable was forthright in saying this before the programme was embarked upon. It is what I said to Highways England officials when we met in January 2020 to discuss road safety across the county."
Last Monday a coroner found Jason Mercer and Alexandru Muguanu were unlawfully killed but the lack of a hard shoulder contributed to their deaths.
The men had a minor crash on the road and pulled over in a live lane to exchange details because there was no hard shoulder.
They were there for less than six minutes before a lorry hit them from behind killing both men.
In his letter Alan Billings says:
"In a normal year I would drive along this part of the motorway many times. It increases anxiety and tension knowing that should you break down, you may slow down considerably or come to a halt in a live lane with heavy goods vehicles coming up at speed behind. This is not my idea of ‘safe’. People need to be safe but also to feel safe when driving.
"In addition, it is one of a number of different types of motorway in South and West Yorkshire and that in itself is confusing and unhelpful for those who use them. These motorways are also busy with lorries from abroad and the different types of motorway within a relatively few miles cannot be easy for them to understand."
The government says it's spending hundreds of millions of pounds on safety improvements for smart motorways after a stock check.