Government have only just noticed that all lane motorways are pointless due to fact that U.K. haven’t the intelligence to use them correctly. Only common sense due to the lack of common sense generally.
Got to love this government. they'll make enormous decisions based on narrow noisy data but have stalled on this when the data is actually far less noisy. One word…. Money!
What I'm absolutely amazed at, is how long it has taken to acknowledge something that is patently common sense. These "smart" (really........) motorways are an unmitigated disaster, an incredibly dangerous, poorly designed and badly implemented solution, as they currently stand!
Let me inject my cynicism, just like the quango's lark. This is just enabling more lunches & drinks do's & expensive hotels too be booked by vile_conservatives. Family members & people exchanging insurance details are dying on british roads due to the disgusting policy of having no hard-shoulder. The most stupid thing is that lane 2/lane 3 isn't closed off if a vehicles is broken down. They just say stranded vehicle on matrix signs. And you must call police via 999 for live-lane breakdowns instead of highways, this came into force a month of so ago. And the utter plebs at police call centers want your full details & address to pass on the details. You can't fathom this evil death_culture that conservatives rejoice in behind closed doors.
Oh and you know those speed viable changes, its supposedly MIDAS AI controlled. And I often recant to the highways call staff that gawd forbid this same cluster fuck of a programming company. Ever are allowed to control the american trident nuclear missile uk program because we are likely to have a epoch caused by faulty programming. Cheers for not banning me mods yet
I don't want to defend "Smart motorways", or the Conservative party, but they are not really a party-political matter because they have been being installed ever since 1995, so plenty of them were done by the Labour party too. I've always assumed that they were a way to ramp up speeding ticket income too, being an excuse to put many more fixed cameras in. Timeline here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_motorway
No more smart motorways https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65288852 Fourteen planned smart motorways, including 11 that had already been paused and three that had earmarked for construction, will be removed from road building plans. The reason these have been so dangerous -38 deaths and many injured- is the original plans provided an emergency area every 600m to use if your car broke down. Then some burke Tory named Graham Dalton changed it to 2.5 miles without any research and thought it would be OK. I wonder when he will be charged with gross criminal negligence?
They've done a good decision, must of had enough of the quango lunches & overnighters. Many lives have been killed due to ALR aka all lane running scenario's. Where the MIDAS system fails to detect a broken down vehicle due to the colour of it at night or bad weather. Didn't they ban fracking also but declare it may come back with the earthquakes suffered homeowners mystified. As a lorry driver the highways operators know my voice & my swearing antics towards the erronous signage been left up. With smart motorways they don't use them as they we're spposed too be. Meaning singular or dual lanes such as three & four (used to be coined fast lanes) closed & instead just declare obstruction on gantry info boards. Giving little indication to all road users where the fuck the stopped vehicle is....cuntage! Rather than closing them off with Red-X. ps: HGV driver gets a £300 fine initially for going through Red-X, upto £1,000. Car drivers a mere hundred knicker RIP those who've perished
According to your link 2005 was the start? But the real troubles began when the Torys allowed the emergency areas to be spaced at 2.5 miles instead of 600m
That was announced quite a while back wasn’t it or was it a pause whilst they worked out which way to slide. They’ve been in my opinion pretty much a waste of money, not so many like to use the inside lane whether it be 3 or 4 lanes. The last prosecution I read about the driver did not react to a vehicle broken down in the first lane resulting in a collision with 2 deaths. He won’t be.
Yes there was a pause announced, and now whilst these smart mways are not banned, the installation/ development is stopped in all cases. Rishi says they are dangerous, and he is right imo.
Dangerous when drivers ignore the warning signs and speed limits. It will make the M6 from J11 to J6 chaotic again if they don’t use that 4th lane and virtually unusable for much of the day.
The M6 from J11-6 is pretty much useless beyond 5:45am, if I get up late M6 toll. Then M6 J6-11 is the same if not worse.
I've told the highways make both 'rush hour' 40mph max & I promise all across the country we'll all get where we're going faster.
Avoid the rush hour and it works using the 4th lane. They have stopped using the 4th lane over the last few weeks resulting in queues again every single day. Pointless spending all that money in J10 now. If drivers didn’t ignore the red crosses and speed limits and the UK invested in proper cameras there would be no issue with using the 4th lane. The cost to business will be immense.
Yes but drivers do ignore the red crosses & the speed limits whilst the wrong cameras, software and oversight are also used. I'd hate to be in car that started to misfire on a smart mway, or behind one that broke down as the likelihood of injury is high. Business is not worth peoples lives
