Vocal Voices

... death is partly our fault

A car broke down where the hard shouolder should be. Another car ploughed into it and a woman died.

Move to the inquest and it turns out that 153 vehicles passed the incident but did not alert National Highways. Err, how are they to do that? Using a mobile phone, even hands free, is illegal unlesss it is set up for that purpose before your journey begins. Most drivers do not do that, they just use speakerphone. That part of the inquest is nonsense. It was 16 minutes and 21 seconds before it became noticed by those who are paid to monitor such events

It was also said that drivers, knowing the motorway had numerous cameras, assumed that they would have picked up the incident. Well why not, that's what the cameras are for... isn't it?

Well yes, but wait. National Highways directors and employees, including chief executive Nick Harris, told the coroner this was not practicable, but without explaining why.

These very same cameras can, and do, pick up every speeding motorist all the time. It does not take a great leap of imagination to install a software patch for them to pick up every very slow moving or stationary vehicles. They might not have a pair of Mk I eyballs on them all the time, but an audio / visual alarm could be set to go off on that camera screen so that a human being can be alerted to intervene. The actual road signs warning drivers of the obstruction and diverting therm out of the leftmost lane, or any lane, could be also automatic.

This inquest is a travesty and a whitewash when there is more and more evidence that (not so) smart motorways are dangerous.

Agree. Blame pushing for the la k of supervision. When smart motorways are active the emergency lanes are lost so they should be closely monitored.

Same ole same ole.

I honestly thought that every bit of a Smart Motorway was monitored by CCTV cameras 24/7 ......

There again, there is also this:

How do smart motorways detect a stationary vehicle?
Stationary vehicles are detected on smart motorways through CCTV cameras and technology through a system called MIDAS, which picks up slowing traffic because of an incident. More intelligent radar technology known as ‘stationary vehicle detection’ (SVD) is used on a few stretches of ‘all lane running’ smart motorways, which automatically picks up a stranded vehicle
The technology can detect stationary vehicles up to 16 minutes quicker than a camera-based system. A Highways England report revealed that only 18% of all-lane running motorways have SVD installed - the RAC would like to see it rolled out across the entire smart motorway network.

https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/driv ... motorways/

Never liked driving them in the West Midlands (M42) to be honest.

A Highways England report revealed that only 18% of all-lane running motorways have SVD installed - the RAC would like to see it rolled out across the entire smart motorway network.

SVD should be compulsory otherwise the smart motorway should not exist.

SMs are a cheap way of reducing congestion without putting in the necessary infrastructure.

The motorways were never built to carry the amount of traffic that they are doing.
Smart motorways are anything but smart, they are an attempt to increase the amount of traffic that the motorways can carry, but it's been done on the cheap. A motorway without a hard shoulder is obviously more dangerous than a motorway with one.

I don't know what the answer is; twice recently we've used the A1(M) and the traffic has been horrendous, especially where it crosses the A64, but smart motorways aren't the answer.

Recently joined the M6 going south from the M65.
Traffic on the northbound M6 was stationary forr several miles. This was about 2.00 p.m in the afternoon. It is not yet a Smart motorway.
I do not know what the hold up was but i don't think a Smart motorway would have helped.