Advanced Driving Hub

SeanP wrote:Completed it. Would be interesting to see the outcomes and contrast daily mail reading public to ADS?

I beg your pardon! Are you suggesting that AD's don't read the Daily Mail?

(I have been told that though I read the DM I am not a Mail reader! My offspring consider that buying the DM is funding hate).

waremark wrote:Put this in any other comments:

All my answers have been negative about Smart Motorways. I consider that there is a trade-off between motorway capacity and safety, and I accept that Smart Motorways done better may be an appropriate way to increase the capacity of overcrowded motorways. Smart Motorways are inherently safer than dual-carriageways.

Views?

I'm do not believe that "Smart Motorways" are safer than Dual Carriageways and I certainly feel far less safe on them.

Typically, other than the refuges, a "Smart" motorway will have an immovable concrete barrier or armco on the left edge. A DC will more often have a "soft verge", drainage stones or an embankment. The point being that there is somewhere to go in an emergency. That absence of escape route is what makes "Smart" motorways so stupidly dangerous.

Other opinions are available.

Strangely Brown wrote: I certainly feel far less safe on them.

Feeling safe doesn't mean you are safe. Risk compensation, etc.

Strangely Brown wrote:a "Smart" motorway will have an immovable concrete barrier or armco on the left edge.

Concrete on the nearside will typically be around obstacles such as bridge piers. Personal opinion is that this is for protection of the infrastructure from terrorism is slightly more important than safety of road users.

Concrete is more typically used for central barriers as they're better at resisting crossovers.

Strangely Brown wrote:A DC will more often have a "soft verge", drainage stones or an embankment. The point being that there is somewhere to go in an emergency.

Safety issue here is that run-off crashes, likely to be at high speed, so high potential for KSIs.

Everything's a trade-off.

on a dual carriageway, most drivers expect to see turnings / junctions / roundabouts / laybys / camera vans on the verge / utilities etc.
on a motorway, most drivers expect to see nothing else - they feel that they are in their own private lane and nothing will get in the way - therefore, they switch off...

ergo, less safe when you breakdown...

akirk wrote:on a dual carriageway, most drivers expect to see turnings / junctions / roundabouts / laybys / camera vans on the verge / utilities etc.
on a motorway, most drivers expect to see nothing else - they feel that they are in their own private lane and nothing will get in the way - therefore, they switch off...

ergo, less safe when you breakdown...

Is that an education issue?

Horse wrote:Everything's a trade-off.

Indeed. The point is that on a Smart Motorway there is no way to get out of the live lane other than into a refuge which very easily could be too far away.
On a DC you will usually have some way of at least getting mostly out of the way.
The former is inherently more dangerous than the latter.

waremark wrote:

akirk wrote:on a dual carriageway, most drivers expect to see turnings / junctions / roundabouts / laybys / camera vans on the verge / utilities etc.
on a motorway, most drivers expect to see nothing else - they feel that they are in their own private lane and nothing will get in the way - therefore, they switch off...

ergo, less safe when you breakdown...

Is that an education issue?

Education may help but it would need effective delivery and that would be really hard. Add to that the fact that more and more people will be using more and more driver assist technology and the number of drivers "switched off" is only set to increase.
No, I do not trust the technology.

Motorways increasingly seem to have empty lane 1s, never mind hard shoulders. Maybe "smart motorways" is just seen as a cheaper approach than educating all the MLMs to use the full capacity of the road already there

There is a wide-spread belief (well, I've heard it from a couple of people, so it must be a 'thing') that lane 1 of a smart motorway is more dangerous, so stay in L2.

Great! Means that it's emptier for me I can see much further ahead, so safer.

I’ve had to use the hard shoulder just once, late 1979s. Mk3 cortina, sudden roar from engine bay, exhaust downpipe had spontaneously detached (completely) from the manifold. Pitch darkness M6 around Shap.

I’d a split seconds or two decide how to react. The decision to pull over and slow to a controlled stop was easy because it was common sense and instinctive. Once relatively out of harms way I could relax for just a second whilst calmly recalling what I’d be expected to do next, lights and hazard warnings on, find the nearest emergency phone etc.

Same “common sense and instinctive” can’t be said for smart motorways. I’d imagine an element of absolute panic would govern most peoples’ reactions in the event of mechanical emergency.