Department for Transport urged to put hard shoulders on smart motorways
Plea from RAC comes a year after plans for new smart motorway projects were cancelled amid longstanding safety concerns
RAC urges ministers to scrap all smart motorways over poor safety record
The RAC is calling on ministers to scrap smart motorways amid concerns over their safety and reinstate hard shoulders.
9 comments:
Rule Number One: No bureaucrat shall ever be held to blame for their decisions.
Rule Number One (Corollary): All decisions will organically arise from a complex interaction between committees, steering groups, and working parties so that individual responsibility is camouflaged beyond recovery.
It's obvious that the smart motorways project was based on a bit of guesswork and a "suck it and see" methodology. Just the sort of thing you want with a broken down car full of your family and juggernauts swerving around you.
Couldn't they rearrange the 'smart motorways' with hard shoulders dotted every 25 metres with EV charging stations and giant Li-ion batteries. What could possibly go wrong?
DJ - yes that's how it's done. Ministers can't blame bunglers partly because they aren't there for long enough and partly because of the camouflage. Not that they seem inclined to blame the bunglers.
Sam - and no doubt they knew that inadequacies of the 'smart' aspect could be blamed on someone else.
Tammly - nothing can possibly go wrong if it is approved by a network of anonymous committees. Until it does of course.
It seems to me that the nation's pothole supply cold be used to bury all the bodies from the Department of Transport.
"Smart" motorways - a championship oxymoron there - have only one use: simplifying the collection of road use taxes.
dearieme - but would they roll flat properly?
Jannie - which seems to be what the purple tubes are for. They will stay.
They could solve the problem on many lengths of motorway by simply moving the crash barriers 2 meters onto the verge. Needing a tow off the grass in wet weather is a minor inconvenience compared to being hit by a 40 tonner. The decision to add barriers inches from the inner lane, blocking any escape, and even preventing the opening of passenger doors when a car pulls over, was as insane as the decision to remove the hard shoulder.
Woodsy - you are right, it's something which has occurred to Mrs H and I when driving along sections of "smart" motorway. It's a mystery how the planners didn't see it unless it's something to do with acquiring the extra strip of land.
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