- “Pragmatic progress” – AA president
Today, the Transport Committee calls on the Department for
Transport and National Highways to:
- Retrofit emergency refuge areas to existing all-lane running
Smart Motorways to make them a maximum of one mile apart,
decreasing to every 0.75 miles where physically possible;
- Insert the emergency corridor manoeuvre into the Highway Code
to help emergency services and traffic patrol officers to access
incidents when traffic is congested;
- Commission the Office for Rail and Road to conduct an
independent evaluation of the effectiveness and operation of
stopped vehicle technology; and,
- Beginning in September 2022, task the Office of Rail and Road
with evaluating the Department’s progress, particularly the
incidences and response times for live lane breakdowns and
educating drivers on the correct action to take.
The AA gave both written and verbal evidence to the committee and
most of the AA’s recommendations are included in the report.
Commenting on the committee’s report, Edmund King, AA president,
said: “This is a pragmatic report which reflects many of the
actions we had been calling for. We have campaigned consistently
for ERAs at least every three quarters of mile and have been
pushing for a rapid retrofit programme. The committee also takes
up our proposal for All Lane Running schemes to revert to the
hard-shoulder between 7pm-7am to avoid confusion and to offer a
refuge to counter live lane collisions that happen at night.
“We also called for better evaluation of the Stopped Vehicle
Detection technology and questioned why it hadn’t been fitted
before schemes opened. The report reflects our view that
controlled motorways with a hard shoulder are the safest option
and that the business case for these should be examined.
“The AA called for a new Highway Code rule in 2017 to create an
emergency corridor in stationary traffic to allow emergency
services access to incidents on motorways where there is no
continuous hard shoulder. We are pleased that the committee has
endorsed that call and we are already working with National
Highways on this matter.
“We hope that the Government will respond quickly to these
recommendations so that action can be taken to improve the safety
of smart motorways and the public’s perception of these roads.”
