Should smart motorways and their speed limits be scrapped?

The front-runner to succeed Boris Johnson as Prime Minister has said smart motorways should be reviewed and scrapped if not working properly.

Speaking at the final Tory party hustings, leadership favourite Liz Truss also said she’d be open to looking at the mandatory speed limits imposed too.

Responding to a question from a Conservative party member about banning smart motorways, Truss said: “I absolutely think that we need to review them and stop them if they’re not working as soon as possible.

“On speed limits, I’d be prepared to look at that. I can’t give you a precise answer on that point. But I do believe that the smart motorways experiment hasn’t worked.”

What is a smart motorway?

Essentially Smart motorways are sections of the motorway that aim to ease congestion and improve the flow of traffic during busy times. A ‘dynamic’ type is where the hard shoulder is used as a full lane (rather than a breakdown lane), with variable speed limits dictated by overhead gantries.

Another type of smart motorway is an ‘all-lane running’ motorway which permanently uses every lane for full running. However, earlier this year the government paused further introduction of this type of smart motorway in order to assess their safety.

There’s also a ‘controlled’ type of smart motorway that has a permanent hard shoulder but uses gantries to enforce variable speed limits to ease traffic flow.

A National Highways report said one in 12 motorway fatalities occurred on the hard shoulder, and in the most recent ‘Stocktake’, found that “overall, what the evidence shows is that in most ways, smart motorways are as safe as, or safer than, the conventional ones. But not in every way”.

In 2019, it reported 15 deaths on ‘all-lane running’ motorways, which was up four from 2018. In 2020, NH reported collisions between a moving car and a stopped car were more likely on ‘all-lane running’ and ‘dynamic’ motorways, but collisions between two or more moving cars “which is how more people die, are less likely”.

An RAC survey back in 2019 said seven out of 10 motorists thought smart motorways were more dangerous than traditional motorways because of a lack of a hard shoulder.

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