There's nothing smart about motorways that kill people

There have been fresh calls in recent days to stop the use of smart motorways, like the M1 in Derbyshire.
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After all this time in lockdown, I imagine just getting back onto the motorway will be pretty weird.

I’ve never been a petrolhead – but I know that having a car means having freedom, the ability to go off and find other people and other places.

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When I was a teenager I had a summer job delivering milk, or working as an independent dairy retailer, as stated on my then wafer-thin CV.

A stretch of  'smart motorway'.A stretch of  'smart motorway'.
A stretch of 'smart motorway'.

Aside from seeing some stunning sunrises and having the roads to myself at 5am, the best bit of the job was that I got to use the little flat-bed mini-cab once the milk round was finished.

With a very small cab that stank vaguely of stale milk, it was definitely not a flash motor with which to impress the ladies – or, indeed, anyone. But it meant I could get out and about, that I had independence.

And that was what the M1 was intended to deliver, when it was first built in 1959 and then extended through our part of the world in the 1960s.

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It’s fair to say there are a few more vehicles on our roads today, than when the first cars and lorries came down the junction 29 sliproad.

And that’s a problem, when extending a major infrastructure item like a motorway is costly and controversial.

Until some bright spark noticed there already was a fourth lane of motorway in Derbyshire that wasn’t being used, we just called it the hard shoulder.

Opening that up for drivers to use has definitely eased congestion, but at what cost?

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There have been far too many crashes – some of them fatal – involving vehicles that have broken down on these sections of smart motorway.

It doesn’t take a genius to see the inherent danger in having a tonne of stationary metal in the middle of four lanes of traffic travelling at 70mph – and with no means of getting that vehicle out of the way.

It must be terrifying for anyone who breaks down on the motorway – and terrifying for every other driver who might suddenly find themselves with a motionless car in the lane in front of them.

There’s usually nothing clever about cutting corners – and nothing smart about motorways that kill people.

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