It was revealed by BBC Panorama yesterday (27/1) that new figures show that smart motorways are more likely to cause accidents.
The £373m project to turn a 33-mile stretch from junction 13 (Milton Keynes) to junction 16 (Northampton and Daventry) into a smart motorway is set to be completed in March 2022.
It will involve changing the three lanes and hard shoulder on the motorway into a four-lane carriageway with no hard shoulder.
BBC Panorama revealed that 38 people have died on Britain's smart motorways in the last five years. This is compared to 90 per year across the entire 2,300-mile network.
A Freedom of Information (FoI) request sent to Highways England revealed that on a stretch of the M25, the number of near misses had risen 20-fold since the hard shoulder was removed in 2014.
Local residents have shared concerns with us over the safety issues the smart motorway may cause upon completion.
One person said: "No need for an inquiry just bring back the hard shoulder. Plus there are 100’s of miles of smart motorway but only a small stretch of the M25 has got the actual ‘smart’ motorway technology! What a waste of our money, and loved ones have died because they had no-where safe to pull over in an emergency!"
Although the idea is to improve the flow of traffic, there are concerns that those who break down will be stuck in the path of oncoming traffic.
Another person added: "Four. Four folk hunched over the engine bay of a car in the first lane trying to get it to start. Thank goodness for my built in hands free so that I could inform the authorities so that they could take the appropriate action... hopefully in time..."
A government review is due to be announced shortly.
