I’ve been against “Managed Motorways” for some time since.
I’ll point out though that my argument is NOT about “not having anywhere to go”, as has been pointed out above, you have loads of A road dual carriageways that have barely a grass verge, or sometimes short on-slips that have joining traffic cornering like Tron before going straight into live lane 1 of 2… And that’s before we talk about no Refuges neither!
The thing that I believe gets people killed on these managed motorways are:
(1) The way the hard shoulder can be changed into a live lane and back with the flick of a switch. Perhaps a warning would be appropriate “Status changing from Hard Shoulder to Live Lane in 60 seconds” might help out?
(2) People drive through red 'x’s without a second thought, although I notice there seems to be a public information drive at the moment, eg. at MSAs on their big video walls “Don’t drive under red 'x’s - or risk getting a fine”…
Perhaps a more draconian roll-out of such penalties would be appropriate?
(3) On Four lane motorways/Dual Carriageways (which most of the managed motorways now are…) Hows abouts having a speed limit on both Live Lane 1 AND 2 that is 10mph less than lanes 3 and 4? Thus, drivers are discouraged to move to the left to undertake (which is illegal anyway - right?) which puts a broken down vehicle in live hard shoulder at risk, should a person decide to undercut a 55mph truck in lane 3 of 4 that is passing a supermarket wagon doing 50 in lane 2, who’s only in lane 2 because they’ve seen the broken down car in lane one…
How easy is it to “not see something”?
Check this out…
I’d humbly suggest to all road users “If you cannot see where you are going - don’t bloody well try to go there!”