Smart Motorway Technology Failures: Why is the technology behind England’s smart motorway is failing?

Smart motorway technology issues:


Smart Motorway Technology Failures: The technology behind England’s smart motorway network has been experiencing frequent failures. 

Figures obtained by the BBC reveal hundreds of incidents when crucial safety equipment was out of action.

Smart motorways use technology to regulate traffic flow and ease congestion. There are different types of smart motorways:

All-Lane-Running (ALR): In these stretches, the hard shoulder has been permanently removed to provide an extra lane.

Controlled Motorways: These have variable speed limits and use lane management to control traffic.
Dynamic Hard Shoulder Running (DHSR): The hard shoulder is opened to traffic during peak times.
The safety concerns arise due to the removal of the hard shoulder. When vehicles break down, they can be stranded in fast-flowing traffic, and emergency vehicles may struggle to reach incidents.
Last year, the government halted the roll-out of new smart motorways due to cost and safety concerns.

However, there are no plans to reinstate the hard shoulder.

Figures from Freedom of Information requests show that between June 2022 and February 2024, there were 392 incidents when motorway technology lost power, making it difficult to detect broken-down vehicles. Some of the outages lasted for several days.

For instance:

In July 2023, there were no signs, signals, cameras, or radar at junction 18 on the M6 for five days.
In September 2023, there were no signs, signals, or CCTV for five days at junction 22 of the M62.
In December 2023, there were no signs, signals, sensors, or CCTV for three and a half days at junction 6 on the M5.

In the six months leading up to February 2024, there were 174 power outages, almost one per day. 

The longest outage occurred at junction 14 on the M4, a stretch of smart motorway that does have a hard shoulder, where sensors and signals were out for 11 days.

Edmund King, president of the AA, emphasizes that these outages are dangerous, especially on smart motorways without a hard shoulder. He states, "If you haven’t got that technology, it’s not even a basic motorway because you haven’t got the hard shoulder. 

It means that you’re playing Russian roulette with people’s lives".

National Highways defends its position, arguing that reinstating the hard shoulder would increase congestion and that well-rehearsed contingency plans exist to deal with power outages.


Additional Safety Concerns:

Beyond technology failures, other safety concerns include:

Hard Shoulder Confusion: Drivers may be confused by the absence of a hard shoulder, leading to risky situations.

Inadequate Monitoring and Response: Critics argue that smart motorways are not monitored closely enough, and there may be insufficient resources to respond promptly to incidents or accidents.

These issues highlight the ongoing debate about the safety trade-offs associated with smart motorways in the UK.