No more smart highways will be built in the UK after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak acknowledged his serious concerns about safety and cost.
A total of 14 planned smart highways – including 11 that have already been interrupted and three earmarked for construction – will be dropped from the government’s road construction plans.
Downing Street acknowledged the lack of public trust that has led the families of the victims to accuse the government of having ‘blood on their hands’ for continuing the experiment.
Existing stretches of smart highways will remain, the government said, but will be subject to a safety refurbishment to provide more emergency stopping points.
The announcement to suspend the plans comes after years of campaigning by grieving relatives who have accused the government of not listening and taking necessary action after repeated “terrible catastrophes.”
The construction of new smart highways is being canceled as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak acknowledged safety and cost concerns. Pictured: Cars line up on the M25 near Egham, Surrey
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak acknowledged concerns about the safety and cost of smart highways
About 10 percent of the UK road network currently consists of smart motorways. They include various methods of controlling traffic flow, such as converting the hard shoulder into an active lane and variable speed limits.
There has long been concern about the safety of smart highways after multiple fatal incidents where vehicles stopped in busy lanes with no hard shoulder were hit from behind.
In January 2022, the government halted the widening of motorways, with the emergency lane being used as a permanent through lane.
This was to be able to collect data for five years to assess whether they are safe for drivers.
During his Tory leadership campaign last summer, Sunak pledged to ban them.
“All drivers deserve to have confidence in the roads they use to travel across the country,” The Telegraph quoted him as saying.
“That’s why I promised last year to stop building all new smart highways, and today I keep that promise.
“Many people across the country rely on cars to get to work, take their children to school and go about their daily lives, and I want them to be able to do this with complete confidence that the roads they travel on drive safe.’
Transport Secretary Mark Harper said: ‘We want the public to know that this government is listening to their concerns.
“Today’s announcement means no new smart highways will be built, an acknowledgment of the public’s lack of confidence among motorists and cost pressures from inflation.”
Ms Jacobs (left) has said it’s hard to go on without her late husband Derek (pictured right)
The moment the Ford Ka hit Mr Jacobs’ van on a smart highway before flipping into the lane and landing on its side in a crash was captured on dash cam
The new government plans come just days after the widow of a van driver who died in a clever highway horror crash called for the emergency lane to be brought back for another “terrible catastrophe.”
Derek Jacobs, 83, was killed when his van was hit by the red Ford Ka on the M1 near Sheffield in March 2019.
The passenger in the Ford Ka, Charles Scripps, 78, died in hospital two months after the collision.
Dashcam footage from a trailing vehicle showed the car, driven by Mr Scripps’ wife, Jean, colliding with the van, flipping over midair and rolling into oncoming traffic, eventually being hit by a carriage.
Earlier this month, a coroner ruled that the crash would not have happened had there been an emergency lane for Mr Jacobs to pull into.
Commenting on the inquiry on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Mr Jacobs’ widow, Sally Jacobs, 86, said she was dismayed that in light of this and other tragic incidents emergency lanes had not been reintroduced on smart motorways.
She said, “I don’t know (whether hard shoulders are fixed). I don’t believe anything they tell me right now.
“The safest thing we can have is the hard shoulder, you have that on everything else. They took it away.
“She (the driver who hit Derek) wasn’t paying attention, okay, but that woman wouldn’t have been on that lane if there had been an emergency lane.
“So my condolences go out to her because not only did she kill my husband, she killed her own husband, but as for restoring the hard shoulders, the political party that says in their manifesto that they will restore them will get thousands of thousands of votes.’
Jason Mercer (left, with wife Claire), 44, and Alexandru Murgeanu (right), 22, died when a lorry crashed into their stationary vehicles on the M1 near Sheffield on 7 June 2019
Eight-year-old Dev Naran (left) was killed on the M6 in Birmingham in 2018 after his family’s car became stranded on an emergency lane used as a through lane. Nargis Begum, 62, (right) died after her broken-down car was hit on the M1 in South Yorkshire in 2018
In June 2019, Jason Mercer and Alexandru Murgeanu died when they were hit by a lorry on the M1 near junction 34 after stopping in the inner lane of the smart motorway section following a minor collision.
Sheffield coroner David Urpeth decided that Mr Mercer and Mr Murgeanu had been killed unlawfully, saying: ‘It is a matter of fact that it is clear that a lack of hard shoulder contributed to this tragedy.’
In 2018 mother of five Nargis Begum died after getting out of the passenger side of a car on the M1 north of Woodhall Services and being hit by a Mercedes.
Mr Mercer’s wife, Claire, who has led the campaign against smart highways, said outside court: ‘We had something that was foolproof before. The hard shoulder was just always there and didn’t make mistakes and we replaced it with something that isn’t always there and does make mistakes.
And that was a conscious choice. They designed danger into a smart highway.
“This is now the third inquest for a total of five people, all within a very short stretch of highway, all similar in appearance. And these are only the ones we know.
“It’s happening all over the country and nothing changes.”
Ms Mercer said Mr Jacobs’ wife, Susan, decided not to come to the inquest because she felt National Highways would not be held accountable.
