Highways England has released the following statement to the
media in relation to recent commentary about the safety
performance of smart motorways:
Chief Highway Engineer Mike Wilson said:
Motorways in this country are among the very safest roads in
the world. Highways England would never carry out a major
improvement scheme without being confident that we would
maintain or enhance this position.
Evidence indicates that smart motorways are helping to improve
safety. The first nine of the latest generation of smart
motorways have reduced casualty rates by more than 25 per cent.
Smart motorways are good for drivers, adding vital extra lanes
to some of our busiest motorways and making journeys safer and
more reliable. As with other roads, we monitor the safety
performance of smart motorways and are rolling out enhancements
to improve the road user experience.
Background
Driving on a smart motorway is simple and intuitive, and are no
different from other roads. The main things to remember are:
- keep left unless overtaking
- do not drive under a Red X
- stick within the speed limit
- know what to do if you break down.
There is more information available on safe motorway driving
on our website.
We are also working closely with recovery operators to operate
safely on smart motorways; view our advice.
Smart motorways are designed with safety in mind, to be at least
as safe as the conventional motorways they replace. Our evidence
shows that they are reducing casualty rates:
- a risk assessment of the design for the latest generation of
smart motorways estimated an overall 18 per cent reduction in
risk compared to a conventional motorway
- the evidence indicates that, since opening, across nine ‘all
lane running’ schemes the casualty rate has reduced by 28 per
cent.
- this figure is based on three years’ data from two smart
motorway schemes on the M25 and one year of data from seven other
schemes across the country.
The hard shoulder is not a safe place - more than a hundred
people are killed or injured on the hard shoulder every year, and
people stopping on them unnecessarily is an issue. Smart
motorways effectively eliminate this risk.
Smart motorways have emergency areas a maximum of 1.5 miles apart
– around 75 seconds of driving. They have emergency telephones
and are wider than hard shoulders to enable drivers to get
further away from traffic.
Feedback from road users show a clear majority feel confident
driving on a smart motorway, and that they are safer and improve
journey times. The watchdog, Transport Focus, recently published
the Strategic Roads User Survey for 2018/19 and reported that 94%
of people feel safe on motorways.
There has been comment in some media outlets about smart
motorways increasing risk by 216%. This is incorrect – smart
motorways were predicted to reduce safety risk compared to
conventional motorways and evidence has demonstrated this
prediction to be correct:
- the figure is an estimate made before the schemes were built
and relates to one specific hazard relating to the risk
associated with stopping in a live lane when there is little
traffic.
- this is one of over 140 hazards that exist on a motorway when
driving. Other includes, driving too fast, driver fatigue and the
risks associated with hard shoulders.
- many of these hazards are reduced by the introduction of
smart motorways, but as we have always said the risk around
stopping in a live lane increases, but this represents less than
5% of the overall risk of driving on a smart motorway.
- this same analysis showed that overall there would be around
an 18% reduction in risk – this has been shown in practice with a
reduced casualty rate with completed schemes of 28%
