‘Wholesale Changes’ Needed To Safety Of Smart Motorways

There need to be wholesale changes to the safety of smart motorways if they remain in place, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said.

The Government has announced that it will immediately stop building additional smart motorways until it has five years of safety data.

There are also plans for more emergency refuge areas on existing stretches of smart motorways, and there will be an independent evaluation into the effectiveness of stopped vehicle detection technology.

But South Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Dr Alan Billings said the halting of the smart motorways roll-out “doesn’t go far enough”, and has called for them to be scrapped completely.

The smart motorway that runs from junctions 32 to 35a on the M1 in South Yorkshire has been criticised for years for its lack of emergency stopping areas. Broken-down vehicles have to stop in live lanes of fast-moving traffic.

South Yorkshire Police Federation Chair Steve Kent said: “If they’re going to stay, there needs to be wholesale changes to the safety around them, and there need to be additional measures put in to protect people who do break down.

“We’ve got concerns about their safety. We also think smart motorways are a way of replacing police officers on the road, which is in itself not good, because we feel there needs to be more investment nationally in roads policing.

“I think the standard of driving is dropping drastically, and using CCTV cameras and gantry speed cameras, who everybody knows are there, is not an answer to deal with that.

“I don’t think anybody doubts that there needs to be a complete review of them, if nothing else.”