Advanced Driving Hub

Another Bill wrote:relatively out of harms way

Almost the jargon, that it's a 'place of relative safety'.

But not, as many believe, 'safe'. Something like 1/12 of mway fatalities happen on the HS and about 100 people die or are injured in HS collisions ever year.

Horse wrote:Something like 1/12 of mway fatalities happen on the HS and about 100 people die or are injured in HS collisions ever year.

I thought the proportion was actually higher than that... but I would take my chances pulling off onto a hard shoulder, or a verge, or whatever space happens to be available over stopping in L1... every, single, time.

Strangely Brown wrote:

Horse wrote:Something like 1/12 of mway fatalities happen on the HS and about 100 people die or are injured in HS collisions ever year.

I thought the proportion was actually higher than that... but I would take my chances pulling off onto a hard shoulder, or a verge, or whatever space happens to be available over stopping in L1... every, single, time.

And so did I until I goggled it.

However, for me, part of driving on a smart motorway is to be prepared, if the car starts to fail - the merest hint, I'll do the utmost to coax it into the next refuge area.

Horse wrote:... for me, part of driving on a smart motorway is to be prepared, if the car starts to fail - the merest hint, I'll do the utmost to coax it into the next refuge area.

And if the failure is such that you can't make it? Do you really want to be forced to sit in a live lane with 40 tons of HGV sharing it, maybe with a driver that is staring at his phone, or maybe steering with his elbows? How much do you really trust the people and systems responsible for closing the lane and how much do you trust the other road users to observe and obey the closure?

Are you prepared to bet your life, or those of your passengers on it?

"Smart" motorways are inherently unsafe and should be reverted to hard shoulders.

I thought that the safety benefit of 'Smart' motorways is that by limiting the flow of traffic in each lane to a similar speed 'undertaking' and consequently 'stop-start' traffic is reduced, resulting in a reduction in collisions which are caused by very high speed-differences. Use of the hard-shoulder as a running lane increases capacity and reduces journey times but at some cost to safety. Perhaps these two aspects of Smart Motorways ought to be considered independently when assessing safety.

Strangely Brown wrote:
And if the failure is such that you can't make it? Do you really want to be forced to sit in a live lane with 40 tons of HGV sharing it, maybe with a driver that is staring at his phone

"Want to"? Of course not. But it won't stop me using them.

Coincidentally, 15 miles from here:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... phone.html

Horse wrote:

Strangely Brown wrote:
And if the failure is such that you can't make it? Do you really want to be forced to sit in a live lane with 40 tons of HGV sharing it, maybe with a driver that is staring at his phone

"Want to"? Of course not. But it won't stop me using them.

Nor me, unless there is a viable alternative that doesn't take forever and a day longer.

Horse wrote:Coincidentally, 15 miles from here:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... phone.html

Yes, there are lots of dangerous drivers out there and the further away from the live lane that you can get the car, and the passengers, the better chance they have of not being hit.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11814133/Watch-lorry-driver-caught-steering-huge-car-transporter-just-elbow-police.html

Although they hadn't broken down, simply in a queue.

Sometimes, 'though, people don't realise how vulnerable they are. IIRC two guys who died a couple of years ago on a smart motorway had stopped to exchange details after a minor bump.

This appeared in my mailbox today...

Major system failure leaves smart motorways across England without safety features for two hours

Strangely Brown wrote:This appeared in my mailbox today...

Major system failure leaves smart motorways across England without safety features for two hours

Strange for this to appear now. It happened on Feb 22nd - thankfully with no crashes reported as a result. I was listening to the radio on the day, when it was reported in real time. I was interested that a single point of failure affected monitoring and signs on (if I understood correctly) all smart motorways. There is mention of measures in mitigation but I don't suppose there was much they could do without advance notice.