UK’s largest road safety charity welcomes progress on smart motorways, but is it enough?

One death on a smart motorway is one too many, so IAM RoadSmart welcomes today’s update from National Highways on the Smart Motorway Stocktake and Action Plan, outlining their progress on delivering safer smart motorways. 

We are now seeing the delivery of safety technology that was promised when the motorway designs were first proposed. Later this year, every existing smart motorway will have stopped vehicle technology (SVD) fitted to alert drivers of incidents ahead. Combined with a 50% increase in emergency refuges by the end of 2025, increased signage and upgraded enforcement cameras, smart motorways can now be seen as a much safer way to travel.

For these systems to keep drivers moving safely, the measures must be reliable. IAM RoadSmart supported a 5-year moratorium on new smart motorway building to allow a full safety picture to be evaluated and real-world lessons to be learned. National Highways must now use this time to drive down casualty rates even further and improve the maintenance and performance of its often-ageing safety related infrastructure.  

Statistics may show that smart motorways have fewer fatal crashes than conventional motorways, but far too many drivers don’t feel safe on them. It is vital that National Highways build on this report to keep the public informed and continue to raise awareness of how to drive safely on smart motorways, so drivers feel confident to use these major national routes rather than avoiding them and travel on riskier A-roads.  

But is the problem the lack, or late delivery, of the technological solutions or a simpler set of issues relating to driver competence, training and awareness? If you are on a motorway and you are scanning far enough ahead to make progress at 70mph, you will surely see traffic ahead braking or changing lane well before a ‘Smart’ sign has been activated. If you miss the clues ahead you are likely to miss the signage as well, for whatever reason that your concentration is not fully on the task.

Motorways are not found in every corner of the UK and ‘Smart’ motorways are actually even rarer, so expecting drivers who have never been trained to drive on a motorway, and in reality very rarely do so, to react quickly and correctly to situations and signs they have never seen before is perhaps a step too far.

The simple answer to Smart motorways seems to have already been invented – don’t drive in lane 1. This has the benefit of allowing these drivers to take a more relaxed approach to their journey, but completely defeats the point of increasing motorway capacity from 3 lanes to 4, in most cases. Unscientific analysis of current behaviour supports the view that drivers have found a way to help themselves feel safer by remaining in lanes 2 and 3. An unexpected outcome from the implementation, or an entirely predictable result? Many motorways and some A roads in the UK still have hard shoulders, so the natural inclination is simply to leave a lane to your left under all circumstances.