CycleChat Investigates - Smart Motorways

Smart Motorways - whaddya reckon?

  • Just amazing, I can waft along in congestion free comfort

    Votes: 4 8.5%
  • OK I guess, though I was happy enough with the old motorways

    Votes: 4 8.5%
  • Meh, not that bothered

    Votes: 5 10.6%
  • I don't like them, the high speed they encourage and lack of hard shoulders is concerning

    Votes: 22 46.8%
  • Who'd have thought Death Race 2000 would turn out to be a documentary?

    Votes: 12 25.5%

  • Total voters
    47
  • Poll closed .
Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
OP
OP
Drago

Drago

Legendary Member
Mile for mile they're allegedly safer as the solid concrete divider eliminates crossover collisions. However, nearside stationary vehicle collisions have, unsurprisingly, shot up.
 

tom73

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
The MP who is leading a campaign to stop them and who lead a recent debate in an interview I heard. Said she'd found that every agency , safely organisation who'd been asked and the emergency services. Told government when they 1st had the idea that it was an unsafe one. She went on to say that she can't find any evidence that anyone said it was safe.

She come to the conclusion that the government must have factored in an acceptable death rate purely to safe face and go ahead anyway.
Which given the way deaths are stacking up sounds right if it is than it's shocking to think that people mean so little to them.
 
Location
London
Watched the prog.
Apparently the general advice for folk unfortunate enough to break down is to stay put.
Now where have we heard that before?
 

Joey Shabadoo

My pronouns are "He", "Him" and "buggerlugs"

PK99

Legendary Member
Location
SW19
An accident not waiting to happen.

I avoid them where I can, and ignore the hard shoulder lane where I can't.
 

Pale Rider

Legendary Member
I agree they are poor from a safety point of view.

But driving into the back of a broken down vehicle is a poor effort from the driver, whatever lane it's in and whatever the road layout.

Hard shoulder deaths have always happened, so any inquiry will need to be careful before ascribing every Smart Motorway death to the Smart system.
 

Pale Rider

Legendary Member
An accident not waiting to happen.

I avoid them where I can, and ignore the hard shoulder lane where I can't.

I can see the attraction, if you are never in lane one you cannot hit a vehicle in it.

But hogging lane two, thereby promoting congestion and resulting driver frustration, is not the most public spirited answer.
 

Pale Rider

Legendary Member
A motorway with a hard shoulder must be safer than one without.

On the other hand, we still have lots of dual carriageways which have no hard shoulder but the same 70mph speed limit.

No one seems to be saying they are inherently dangerous.
 

PK99

Legendary Member
Location
SW19
bbhb by
A motorway with a hard shoulder must be safer than one without.

On the other hand, we still have lots of dual carriageways which have no hard shoulder but the same 70mph speed limit.

No one seems to be saying they are inherently dangerous.

But they tend not to have nose to tail HGVs thundering along at their speed limit.
 

Pale Rider

Legendary Member
bbhb by


But they tend not to have nose to tail HGVs thundering along at their speed limit.

They don't, but what they do have is junctions which are not graded, short or non existent slip roads, and even right turns across the central reservation.

Hence the stats which say motorways are the safest roads per mile travelled.

That may not have included Smart motorways, but I doubt their poorer safety record will have made any difference to the safety league table.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom