Smart Motorways

Wimbles

Wimbles

Well-Known Member
Joined
20 December 2007
Messages
1,842
Location
Derbyshire
Visit site
I had my first experience of something going wrong on one of the new "smart" motorways yesterday and it's left me feeling rather unsettled.

Driving in my small horsebox up the M1 near junction 30 yesterday with one horse on board I had a big blow out. It was the first time that I have experienced this and it was really very scary. The box lurched out to side and I had to use a considerable amount of strength to keep it going in the right direction. The hazards went on but at that point I realised that because of the new motorway configuration there was no hard shoulder and a crash barrier stopping me getting off the road.

The horse was scared and banging about due to the loud noises and bumpy ride. Very fortunately I wasn't alone and both my yard owners were fantastic. One of them knew that there was an emergency pull in a little further along so I was able to keep the box moving and get off the road but if it had been an issue that had stopped me completely I would have been stranded in lane one.

We used the emergency phone to close lane one so that we could safely change the tyre but they just said that they would keep that camera on us?!?! How is that helpful? Oh, so they could watch someone plough into us?

Earlier in the week there had been a big pile up with about 6 lorries because one broke down and couldn't get off the carriageway. I understand how the smart Motorways are meant to work but in the few seconds/minutes that it takes to put that into place, you really are at the mercy of God and it's terrifying to think about it. It doesn't matter than it was a horsebox, it would be just as bad in a car, if not worse because it's smaller and less visible.

Thankfully the M1 was fairly quiet and my amazing YO changed the tyre quickly and we were back on our way but it has really shaken me up.

It really is something to think about, if you're travelling on these roads.
 
Glad you made it back safely, agree it could have been much worse, thank god you weren't by yourself!!

I had a similar thing at the beginning of the year, horse came back from the vets and got himself terribly wound up and tried to jump over the weave grill into the jockey area. They were doing works to convert to a smart motorway so no hard shoulder but luckily no crash barrier either so transporter managed to knock through some cones and pull over onto a bit of no mans land so we could hop out and shove him back over. Had to wait for the vet to come to sedate and was the longest 20 minutes of my life standing in the back of box that moved every time a lorry shot past with a terrified horse. Police were totally useless, came out to effectively shout at us for trashing some cones, threatened to fine the transporter and told us we should have carried on to the next services (just over 7 miles away!)

As a driver too there is nothing more frustrating than queuing for an hour on m6 because someone has broken down in the left hand lane and there is nowhere for them to go because the hard shoulder has gone!
 
There is nothing smart about smart motorways .They are a stupid dangerous idea put forward by people completely out of touch with reality. The police were totally opposed to their introduction.A far better way of improving traffic flow would have been the removal of speed limiters on trucks .
 
Smart motorway or not, I HATE the M1 with a passion, it's such a dangerous road. Lanes appear and disappear at whim with no real warning.

Glad everything turned out okay, how scary!
 
Awful for you to have experienced that.

But, (tin hat on) I do think they are good in some ways - I used to regularly travel from the M62 Junction on the M1 to Junction 33 on a daily basis, and you do notice the positive differences.

For instance, if there is traffic they turn the variable speed limit on and it slows the traffic right down but also keeps moving. Better than being stuck like on the M6. Also, I have noticed if there is an accident or incident, they warn you quite early that such a lane is shut, so you move over. However, there are still motorists on the road that don't give a damn for other road users and don't watched the signs.

I do agree with you though, that there does need to be a hard shoulder because I would hate to break down in a live lane and have no where to pull off!

I hope your OK xxx
 
So pleased to hear that you and your horse are o.k.
These Smart Motorways are a total recipe for disaster and the traditional hard shoulders should be brought back.
You were very sensible to have a spare tyre and equipment to change it as otherwise you would have been stranded on the side of the motorway for ages.
 
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-drive-on-a-smart-motorway here is some guidance on what to do in an emergency. As far as I know they have cameras constantly trained on you and there is not one area of smart motorway that cannot be picked up on the cameras as they are set every few hundred yards. The images are fed back to the control room and the red crosses go on the second someone stops on there. However, like you say that doesn't help if you can't get into an emergency refuge area quick enough and I have seen many people taking ages to get off a X marked lane also which people are now (rightly so) being prosecuted for.

I drive on one about four times a week for one junction and think they are very good for evening rush hour traffic, they reduce traffic flow considerably. They use them a lot on the M42 in Solihull, (West Mids) and I've used them driving in both directions. A lot of people use them to overtake (or undertake I suppose) all the other traffic on the motorway and when its really heavy go off the slip road, around the roundabout and back on the motorway the other side which I know they are not designed to do, but they do that because if they stayed on the outside lane (aka the fast lane) they would still be there crawling along!

Sorry for your scary experience.
 
How scary! What is the logic behind not having a hard shoulder? My wipers once cut out during an almighty downpour somewhere on the A72 I think. Dual carriageway but motorway style traffic and speed, surrounded by lorries, no hard shoulder. It was some of the most terrifying moments I've experienced... essentially driving blind for what felt like forever. I was very lucky that a layby appeared almost straight away and I could just see enough to react quick enough to pull off. But it was horrible. A hard shoulder would have been very useful at that point! And that was just in a little car!
 
I quite like the M42 one by Birmingham NEC, it is only smart when the traffic is bad, so much of the time you don't use the 'hard shoulder' unless it's going at 40mph or less

I'm not looking forward to the M4 being 'Smart', folk drive like idiots on there anyway
 
PapaverFollis said:
How scary! What is the logic behind not having a hard shoulder? !
Click to expand...
The logic about using the hard shoulder as a lane is that it frees up an extra lane reduced journey times. The smart motorway lane is only ever used in times of need, i.e. when the other three lanes are crawling bumper to bumper which is usually in the rush hour. Then they open the hard shoulder and let you know its open by displaying a sign over it ie. 40mph, 50mph etc, etc. You can still use it as a hard shoulder because each 'visible' stretch of hardshoulder is monitored by CCTV camera which goes directly to the traffic monitoring centre. If there is a bend on the motorway the camera will take you up to that bend, after that bend will be another camera, etc, etc so not even half a foot is unmonitored.

You can never go over 60mph in the hard shoulder it. Once inside the thick white line you are only allowed to exit into the inside lane of the motorwasy if you do not want to come off at the next junction. You are not meant to come out of the hard shoulder and then go back onto it willy nilly. It is very effective and has drastically reduced traffic congestion because it uses technology which 'reads' the traffic, thus preventing build up of traffic by altering the traffic speed on the overhead gantries. The technology reads the traffic speed by using inductive loops cut into the motorway surface which measures how fast you are driving, in the same way traffic lights work by responding to cars coming towards them because you drive over the inductive loops in the road surface. Image of inductive loop https://www.bing.com/images/search?...608013057195311792&selectedIndex=2&ajaxhist=0

Thus if there is an accident a mile ahead, 3/4 of a mile before the incident the signs overhead will reduce the traffic speed accordingly. The cameras are each operated by staff who can zoom in and monitor an incident.

Finally they do average speed so the cameras can detect whether cars are doing over 60mph. The time it takes to get from one gantry to another divided into the distance will tell you the speed you are going.

I think they are a brilliant invention but so long as there are drivers who do not respond to the overhead gantries, or think 'oh I am sure I won't have to reduce speed just yet, or I am sure there won't be an accident ahead even though its telling me to get out of this lane' then it will never work which is why they have had so much coverage on the TV about smart motorways recently.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yeh, we all know the smart motorway spiel, but if I have a blow out or breakdown, I want to be able to pull onto the hard shoulder immediately. I've driven the M42 a lot too.

It's the lack of a permanent hard shoulder that's the killer (literally). Traffic management on the live lanes is a great initiative, but they've thrown the baby out with the bathwater. They are currently 'smarting' the M6 near here, so now every day there are huge hold ups due to 'a broken down vehicle'.
 
Tiddlypom said:
Yeh, we all know the smart motorway spiel, but if I have a blow out or breakdown, I want to be able to pull onto the hard shoulder immediately. I've driven the M42 a lot too.

.
Click to expand...
No not everyone knows about the 'smart motorway spiel' as you put it and I took the trouble to explain for those that didn't. Like not many people know about the reason traffic lights change - its not because they are on a timer necessarily! I think that there are many iniatives put in place to prevent cars driving into the back of broken down cars, and its probably more beneficial for the hundreds of thousands of people who use the motorways every day to have smart lanes in place than the odd person who breaks down and who has literally no where to go. Would be interesting to get a FOI request to find out how many people have died in hard shoulder collisions due to using the hard shoulder as an extra lane. I would guesstimate none.

I have read that two trial sections of 'all-lane running' on the M25 saw accidents down 17% and casualty rates down 21% in the first year and the busiest journey times have almost halved. Traffic is set to increase 60% from 2010 to 2040. Its either that or carve more of the countryside up and spend biliions in tax payers money to make motorways even wider still with extra lanes and thus cause loads of traffic jams during the conversion. Its certainly a problem that will need addressing sometime in the future.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I don't think it is clear that you shouldn't be using the hard shoulder as the left lane, until you have had a bit of practice and discover that it says 'use hard shoulder' so you do as instructed then a bit down the road it says 'hard shoulder only for junction 9a', ad finitum. So I now ignore the signs that say 'use hard shoulder' :p.

I don't really know what the other options are for keeping traffic moving though as I presume we cannot afford to widen everything just to cope with rush hour but totally understand that you really don't want to become immobile during that rush hour.
 
ester said:
I don't think it is clear that you shouldn't be using the hard shoulder as the left lane, until you have had a bit of practice and discover that it says 'use hard shoulder' so you do as instructed then a bit down the road it says 'hard shoulder only for junction 9a', ad finitum. So I now ignore the signs that say 'use hard shoulder' :p.

I don't really know what the other options are for keeping traffic moving though as I presume we cannot afford to widen everything just to cope with rush hour but totally understand that you really don't want to become immobile during that rush hour.
Click to expand...

In this part of the M1 it's not like the M42 bit (sorry if that's not what you were referring to). There are four lanes in use at all times, it's never the hard shoulder so rush hour or not you are left completely exposed.

I understand that they probably help traffic congestion but I'm not sure that it should be at the cost of lives, which is what I think will happen (and did last week sadly)
 
I do a few bits on various motorways, I do quite a bit of mileage at weekends ATM :) so yes some of them are definitely permanent, but no I don't think I will have done your bit of the M1 :D

I do do a bit of the M42 along with others though and this bit of HB's post has certainly never been clear by signage to me as when there are long gaps between junctions it seems to be used as a left lane quite a lot, not only as an exit lane. 'Once inside the thick white line you are only allowed to exit into the inside lane of the motorwasy if you do not want to come off at the next junction. You are not meant to come out of the hard shoulder and then go back onto it willy nilly.'
 
Well I've learned something anyway. We don't have many motorways round here. Lol. Or traffic. We just get the risk of head on collisions on country roads instead. In theory the using the hard shoulder when its busy sounds ok but it does kind of rely on everyone paying attention and playing by the rules... not sure I trust human beings on that front to be honest!
 
Wimbles said:
I had my first experience of something going wrong on one of the new "smart" motorways yesterday and it's left me feeling rather unsettled.

Driving in my small horsebox up the M1 near junction 30 yesterday with one horse on board I had a big blow out. It was the first time that I have experienced this and it was really very scary. The box lurched out to side and I had to use a considerable amount of strength to keep it going in the right direction. The hazards went on but at that point I realised that because of the new motorway configuration there was no hard shoulder and a crash barrier stopping me getting off the road.

The horse was scared and banging about due to the loud noises and bumpy ride. Very fortunately I wasn't alone and both my yard owners were fantastic. One of them knew that there was an emergency pull in a little further along so I was able to keep the box moving and get off the road but if it had been an issue that had stopped me completely I would have been stranded in lane one.

We used the emergency phone to close lane one so that we could safely change the tyre but they just said that they would keep that camera on us?!?! How is that helpful? Oh, so they could watch someone plough into us?

Earlier in the week there had been a big pile up with about 6 lorries because one broke down and couldn't get off the carriageway. I understand how the smart Motorways are meant to work but in the few seconds/minutes that it takes to put that into place, you really are at the mercy of God and it's terrifying to think about it. It doesn't matter than it was a horsebox, it would be just as bad in a car, if not worse because it's smaller and less visible.

Thankfully the M1 was fairly quiet and my amazing YO changed the tyre quickly and we were back on our way but it has really shaken me up.

It really is something to think about, if you're travelling on these roads.
Click to expand...

How scary - and I know that feeling well though luckily I only had furniture in my box, but in the early 2000's I had a blow out on the motorway on the drivers side, and like you had to grab the wheel on the left side with both hands to keep the lorry straight. I got to hard shoulder and eventually taken to have it repaired.


Just thankful no one hurt and your all safe.
 
ester said:
I don't think it is clear that you shouldn't be using the hard shoulder as the left lane, until you have had a bit of practice and discover that it says 'use hard shoulder' so you do as instructed then a bit down the road it says 'hard shoulder only for junction 9a', ad finitum. So I now ignore the signs that say 'use hard shoulder' :p
Click to expand...
Very wise. The left lane sucks you in, caresses you for a bit then tells you to p1ss off into to lane 2. As all regular motorway users know, the enforced change of lane sets up the hairest moments.
 
My pony literally flipped himself over backwards on a stretch of the M6 like this- horrible experience as I was desperate to move the partition to enable him to get up but being stopped in a moving motorway lane with only some hazards to warn people (no time to run the triangle out) didn’t seem ideal. Not good.
 
Wimbles said:
In this part of the M1 it's not like the M42 bit (sorry if that's not what you were referring to). There are four lanes in use at all times, it's never the hard shoulder so rush hour or not you are left completely exposed.

I understand that they probably help traffic congestion but I'm not sure that it should be at the cost of lives, which is what I think will happen (and did last week sadly)
Click to expand...

I use the bit they have just made the extra junction for by dunstable to get to the l&d and i must admit its a little confusing at first when they say you can use thehrd shoulder/extra lane for this amount of time then its not in use next time.
I just stay in the left hand lane as im coming off the next junction anyway but it is a bit daunting
 
Mike007 said:
There is nothing smart about smart motorways .They are a stupid dangerous idea put forward by people completely out of touch with reality. The police were totally opposed to their introduction.A far better way of improving traffic flow would have been the removal of speed limiters on trucks .
Click to expand...

This ^^^ I hate them and cannot believe they got the go ahead. Bloody ridiculous idea.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top