Witnesses
Jim O'Sullivan,
Chief Executive, Highways England;
Elliot Shaw, Executive Director of Strategy and
Planning, Highways England; and Mike
Wilson, Chief Highways Engineer, Highways England.
: In relation to one stretch of
the M1 motorway, South Yorkshire police have deployed extra patrols
in the all-lane running stretch. Does this indicate that you do not
have enough traffic officers to monitor that? There is an
interesting quote from Edmund King of the AA. He remarked that the
situation on the M1 in South Yorkshire “means the police know the
Highways England Scheme is dangerous”—that is fairly damning—“but
have to increase resources to pick up the pieces.” The police have
to increase their resources to pick up the pieces after a design
issue on a stretch of motorway that potentially is causing concern.
I do not know the man, but Edmund King of the AA must be a
recognised figure.
Jim O'Sullivan: I know Edmund quite well; he is a close
colleague. We serve together on the DFT’s motorist forum, and
that opinion would be consistent with opinions he has expressed
on smart motorways in general.
We have already mentioned in this session that we have seen a
cluster of accidents in that section of the M1. We have analysed
them. We are satisfied with the design of the smart motorway in
that area. A cluster like that is unusual but not unheard of. We
have had clusters of accidents like that on other motorways that
are not smart motorways, with similar numbers of fatalities.
We are always interested in a cluster of accidents, but we are a
data-led organisation. We now have nine of these schemes and 300
miles of them. It is tragic and upsetting, but it is not entirely
unreasonable or unheard of that we would have a cluster. There
are enough of these schemes now that we would see a cluster of
accidents similar to what we see in other parts of our motorway
network.
: the AA believes that the
30‑metre stopping space is not long enough to allow vehicles to
build up sufficient speed to rejoin the motorway. How do you
respond to the AA’s view?
Jim O'Sullivan: This is another area where I think we need to do
more communication. When your vehicle is repaired and you are
ready to leave the emergency area, we set the red Xs in the first
lane and close the lane so that you can exit safely. I wish more
people knew about that; maybe advising the Committee of it this
morning will be part of sharing it...
: With the combination of the
red X and what you have at the moment, do you feel the AA’s view
is not fair?
Jim O'Sullivan: We close the inside lane for you to exit an
emergency refuge area. That has to be safer than trying to
accelerate on a hard shoulder and pulling out into the first lane
of the motorway...
: You touched on this just
now. You know that the AA and the RAC take a different view. A
recent survey by the AA of some 15,000 drivers showed that seven
out of 10 do not feel safe. As you said, it is the same with
aviation. If people do not feel safe, that is an important point
in its own right, and in the end it is a judgment call. I suggest
to you that in the end you need to get to a very different
figure. How long will it be before that survey shows that as many
people make the same judgment as you that it is safe?
Jim O'Sullivan: One thing we can definitely agree with the AA on
is that this is a very contentious topic. The Government have
created a watchdog called Transport Focus whose job is to monitor
what motorists and road users think of Highways England, feed it
back to us and then ensure we are taking such advice seriously.
If one were to look at the Transport Focus work on smart
motorways, there are two interesting conclusions. It looks right
across all road users; it looks at truck drivers, coach drivers,
the freight industry—everybody. The first interesting thing that
I draw from that, which is relevant to this discussion, is the
fact that all the road users they talked to did not mention smart
motorway safety unless pressed. When they were asked what they
thought of their journey, what it was like and what they would
like us to change or do, none of them raised safety. It was only
when they were asked how they felt about the safety of smart
motorways that they responded. We believe that, based on the
Transport Focus evidence, the vast majority of people using smart
motorways do not reflect the views of AA members.
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