Well nearly filled my pants last night on M1 coming north last night at 9pm…Just came on at J39, 4 lane stretch, no hard shoulder… Weather was awful, sleet. wet roads pitch black.
Im doing about 45 in lane 1 and i just about notice in distance a tiny white light bobbing around in the bushes behind the crash barrier to my left.
I then finally see when Im about 50m away a black car, no lights on, no hazards stopped in lane 1, with a guy behind the crash barrier frantically waving his phone to tell people to move lanes. I immediately brake and indicate right, i can see a BMW in lane 2 right near my back end of trailer, i can see lanes 3 and 4 are empty and this ■■■■ doesnt even move over. After almost coming to a stop i get into lane 2 and pass the stranded car.
Nothing on overheads warning of this, and I hope nothing happened to the stranded guy afterwards, it was a bad accident waiting to happen. All it needed was someone in Lane 1 not concentrating, or on phone, to smash into the back of the car. A hard shoulder would have prevented any of this.
I get your drift but on the positive side it used to take about 3 hours to get past jnc 28 of the m1 going north on a friday afternoon - introducing the extra lane made a big difference.
I’ve rang Highway’s England countless times in the past to report a live lane blocked or debris in road(a wheelbarrow last time) which hasn’t been spotted,it was a simple process,had them in contact list,pressed phone button on steering wheel e.t.c,Now you have to select options 1,2 e.t.c,Can’t do that in my Daf without picking handset up so I won’t bother…
I’m pretty sure no one sits watching the cameras though…
JeffA:
I get your drift but on the positive side it used to take about 3 hours to get past jnc 28 of the m1 going north on a friday afternoon - introducing the extra lane made a big difference.
JeffA:
I get your drift but on the positive side it used to take about 3 hours to get past jnc 28 of the m1 going north on a friday afternoon - introducing the extra lane made a big difference.
At busy times with slow moving traffic have 4 lanes running to ease congestion? Yes.
But the OP is talking about 9pm. Is it that busy then? Why have 4 lanes and no hard shoulder then? Have I got summat wrong here?
On that stretch its permanent 4 lanes…no hard shoulder for 7 miles i think. when you come on at j39 the inside lane feeds on to become the new lane 1…maybe that makes it not a smart motorway? It was still incredibly dangerous whatever you call the road
Any motorway that gives you nowhere to go in an emergency is bad news.
Swordsy:
On that stretch its permanent 4 lanes…no hard shoulder for 7 miles i think. when you come on at j39 the inside lane feeds on to become the new lane 1…maybe that makes it not a smart motorway? It was still incredibly dangerous whatever you call the road
Any motorway that gives you nowhere to go in an emergency is bad news.
Thanks for the explanation.
Sounds dumb rather than smart.
Swordsy:
Well nearly filled my pants last night on M1 coming north last night at 9pm…Just came on at J39, 4 lane stretch, no hard shoulder… Weather was awful, sleet. wet roads pitch black.
Im doing about 45 in lane 1 and i just about notice in distance a tiny white light bobbing around in the bushes behind the crash barrier to my left.
I then finally see when Im about 50m away a black car, no lights on, no hazards stopped in lane 1, with a guy behind the crash barrier frantically waving his phone to tell people to move lanes. I immediately brake and indicate right, i can see a BMW in lane 2 right near my back end of trailer, i can see lanes 3 and 4 are empty and this ■■■■ doesnt even move over. After almost coming to a stop i get into lane 2 and pass the stranded car.
Nothing on overheads warning of this, and I hope nothing happened to the stranded guy afterwards, it was a bad accident waiting to happen. All it needed was someone in Lane 1 not concentrating, or on phone, to smash into the back of the car. A hard shoulder would have prevented any of this.
Dreaful,I couldnt believe it when they invented smart motorways,yes,roads full of idiots,I had one yesterday on the a34,wouldnt slow down to let me past a broken down car
i was going to ask why didnt he have his hazzards on but then re read the o/p and saw he said it was a bmw.
i called the highways agency once and only once when there was a bucket laying in the left hand lane of bluebell hill (on the 2 lane section) 30 minuetes on the phone to them because they kept asking me daft questions like what colour is the bucket.
it doesnt supprise me that these smart motorways dont work because a smart person isnt going to sit there for 8 hours watching a tv screen
cooper1203:
i was going to ask why didnt he have his hazzards on but then re read the o/p and saw he said it was a bmw.
i called the highways agency once and only once when there was a bucket laying in the left hand lane of bluebell hill (on the 2 lane section) 30 minuetes on the phone to them because they kept asking me daft questions like what colour is the bucket.
it doesnt supprise me that these smart motorways dont work because a smart person isnt going to sit there for 8 hours watching a tv screen
Theres a hole in my bucket!
They do sit watching and when some lost soul breaks down they start quipping “you are gonna die, start praying!!” - some whistleblower filmed them
Keep the smart motorways but put the hard shoulder back in and just allow people to drive in it during peak periods with proper monitoring. Rest of the time just put a red cross above the hard shoulder.
Similar thing happened to me on the M5 a few months ago. Stranded car with no warning signs.
lewn777:
Keep the smart motorways but put the hard shoulder back in and just allow people to drive in it during peak periods with proper monitoring. Rest of the time just put a red cross above the hard shoulder.
Similar thing happened to me on the M5 a few months ago. Stranded car with no warning signs.
I must admit, I thought the original idea was to have lane 1 as a hard shoulder during normal off peak traffic flow, and then become a running lane during peak periods/congestion with a reduced speed limit on all lanes.
trucken:
I must admit, I thought the original idea was to have lane 1 as a hard shoulder during normal off peak traffic flow.
It was and that’s how it works on M62 past Bradford. Of course doesn’t help that you travel down there in lane 1 / hard shoulder, then it suddenly becomes “lane 1 for x junction only”. So no one uses them.
All lane running is seriously dangerous as demonstrated by the M1 J27 to 30 bit. They’ve had to add those new detectors alone all the smart motorways now but I assume they aren’t working yet as still see cars broken down with nothing on the matrix.
As for J28, its still screwed at 7am so didn’t work.
Santa:
Of course, no one ever runs into stopped vehicles on hard shoulders do they?
Nope.
I too think the better solution would be so called ‘‘managed smart m-ways’’ with the HS temporarily open during peak traffic that would however require live 24/7 monitoring plus backup cameras and would probably cause even more congestion once someone does break down and the whole traffic needs to be shuffled into 1 fewer lanes, which is what happens all the time on the M25 when there’s say an accident and a lane or 2 need to be closed you can forget about getting anywhere because the queues that form and queue jumpers etc. + they have to close for 3-4-10 miles before the actual location of the accident/breakdown
Fwiw I think UK motorways will never work as intended (free flow of traffic over large distances) simply because there are far far far too many junctions and where they are few and far apart the ones there are are too overloaded and spill over the motorways so no win :_(
JeffA:
I get your drift but on the positive side it used to take about 3 hours to get past jnc 28 of the m1 going north on a friday afternoon - introducing the extra lane made a big difference.
Would you put a price on a life?
Smart motorways are like cruise liners with no lifeboats.
trucken:
I must admit, I thought the original idea was to have lane 1 as a hard shoulder during normal off peak traffic flow.
It was and that’s how it works on M62 past Bradford. Of course doesn’t help that you travel down there in lane 1 / hard shoulder, then it suddenly becomes “lane 1 for x junction only”. So no one uses them.
All lane running is seriously dangerous as demonstrated by the M1 J27 to 30 bit. They’ve had to add those new detectors alone all the smart motorways now but I assume they aren’t working yet as still see cars broken down with nothing on the matrix.
As for J28, its still screwed at 7am so didn’t work.
Yes.
The original trials were done on 4 lanes, with lots of run off areas and lots of surveillance.
It has been rolled out with fewer run offs and less surveillance.
.
It seems to have surprised the Ministers(s) that results aren’t as predicated!
The decisions and changes were made under changes of Ministers so tying it down to one person to blame isn’t easy.
A whole lot of Tossers all made bad choices. Tinkering around the edges of a do-able (never perfect, who would pay for 5 lanes plus hard shoulder?) scheme made a bad scheme.
Wasn’t it 2 or 3 years ago there was a debate about this and the roll out of new smart m’ways supposed to be halted.
What came out re a bandaid to plaster the chasm? build more refuges.
Like everything else they say it was lies and ■■■■■■■■, in those sections under construction at the time surely it wasn’t beyond the incompetence of those in charge to design and build in more refuges whilst the equipment was all in place?
Or are there more lucractive contracts for mates/relatives to be issued when the roads are completed, plus as a bonus more disruption, or do they imagine we’ve forgotten what they promised…wasn’t me guv it was the minister of the time
What should have happened from day one is the refuge should have been continuous, wherever possible, ie build a 5th lane in to be the new hard shoulder where feasable, no need to widen all the bridges, just run the new hard should right up to the bridge (or overpass/elevated section) and resume once passed.
Or, as above, the hard shoulder should be subject to peak/busy period use, something which now happens on the Birmingham M6 section…a section i’ve personally come across some 5 unwarned of vehicles to date stopped in the live nearside lane when it was all lane running, and i assure anyone even at 50 mph your closing time to a stopped vehicle in broad daylight is breathtakingly short.
Money wasn’t an object, they’ve borrowed untold sums of other peoples money to impoverish the country for the covid scam, it would appear they haven’t caused enough destruction and misery yet so about to finish the survivng small businesses off over this coming winter. Bravo.
Its like the frankly ridiculous junction that was the top of the A14/M1/M6 junction until recently, what lunatic failed to imagine what the results might be of forcing a major dual carriageway into a single lane?
Whoever designed and passed that farce as suitable should have faced charges every time the numerous innocent souls perished or were crushed with life changing injuries due entirely to that callous piece of road design, but like everything else those who design such things never bother to ask professional road users (and we are) what we think would be the likely results or for input…an hour or two in one of the surviving transport cafes speaking to actual drivers (not pen pushers) they would have learned in 2 hours the folly they were about to ■■■■ £millions on yet ruin.
Juddian:
but like everything else those who design such things never bother to ask professional road users (and we are) what we think would be the likely results or for input…an hour or two in one of the surviving transport cafes speaking to actual drivers (not pen pushers) they would have learned in 2 hours the folly they were about to ■■■■ £millions on yet ruin.
Ill disagree a bit here. An engineer might well recommend a good road solution, an accountant will tell them it isnt possible on the budget allowed.
All real world problems are cost sensitive.
But the final word on roads always is made by a politician.
Given a free hand engineers will often “over engineer” everything. They would have build flyovers, long slip roads, extra relief loops all over any junction you want to name. When it gets to the Ministers desk that is all long gone, well, it would never be submitted because it isnt realistic.
.
The part-time running with surveillance, and run-offs was ot seems an “OK-ish” scheme. The played about with cheaper scheme, never looked at properly from safety angles, but carefully costed to be cheaper, was.
.
osark:
Would you put a price on a life?
Smart motorways are like cruise liners with no lifeboats.
I like the “cruise liner with no life boats” point, but sorry,
We put a price on life every day.
In so many ways lives are costed out. Be it building hospitals and paying Drs, nurses to staff them, buying medicines. Health is easy to see it working.
But roads can ALL be safer if we make them wider. Hard shoulders on all m-ways, and all dual carriageways, and ALL roads.
That would make roads safer. But the cost of putting a hard shoulder everywhere to save the one or two(?) killed by rear ending in 30mph zones is too much.
The cost of HS to save those rear ended on m-ways is probably worth it I reckon.
Let`s have those life boats on cruise liners, but putting them on river barges is (although it may save one life a decade) too expensive.
