The president of the AA has called on ministers to run a pilot project to restore the hard shoulder on an all lane running (ALR) smart motorway with a ‘lane discipline’ campaign to encourage drivers to make best use of the remaining three lanes.
Speaking on the Motorhome Matt Podcast, Edmund King said it was a big scandal that, due to cost-cutting, smart motorways were rolled out with emergency areas spaced significantly further apart than the 2006 pilot on the M42.
He added that it was also a ‘complete scandal’ that they were rolled out without the radar stopped vehicle detection (SVD) technology that was initially promised. He said the AA had embarrassed the Government into rolling out SVD, but that it was ‘not perfect’ and was unable to detect some cars with a low profile.
He said: ‘You can argue all day long, as National Highways do, that they’re safer et cetera, but common sense tells you, if you’re broken down and there’s nowhere to stop, you become a sitting duck and it doesn’t matter how good the technology is, there are too many dependables. Will a red X come on? If a red X comes on, will the vehicles abide by that red X? Will they see me in the fog?
‘What we’ve suggested to the minister is, run a pilot whereby you take the inside lane…put a permanent red X on – basically make it the hard shoulder. But then, run a lane discipline campaign with the police to get better use out of the capacity of the motorway.
‘All too often you see on a four-lane smart motorway, people are only in the inside two lanes. If you could get people to move over to the left when not overtaking, you would increase capacity by about a third, and therefore you wouldn’t be causing more congestion by turning that running lane into a hard shoulder.’
