travelling north, The traffic started crawling around 29A, as i looked southbound i could see what looked like maybe a Nissan Micra broke down in live lane one, the occupant and his son where over the barrier… An Artic was trundling down and made a rapid exit into lane two so i presumed there wasn’t any warnings on the overhead gantry At this point i was just dialing 999 when i heard the most sickening bang and a screech. Looking in my mirror i could see smoke and a trailer veering from side to side. i really hope that the driver / drivers are ok, its about time the Goverment took a long hard look at these smart motorways because great when all is fine and dandy. But when things go wrong its only a matter of time before lives are lost if not lost already…
The rights and wrongs of smart motorways have been discussed on here hundreds of times
Several have been lost especially on northern section of M1, but the Highways top bods couldn’t give a [fb] and just blame drivers for not breaking down in a more considerable way, so unfortunately this wont even count if the occupants were out of the car.
Bits around here seem to be more lethal than many due to lots of long bends and they rarely seem to get the signs on in timely way. Seen HATO there and still no matrix.
Not sure where they are controlled from in Notts / Derbyshire / South Yorkshire but suspect they are looking at a massive area.
Hopefully no one else hurt.
Couple of weeks ago on the M6 15 to 13 roadworks southbound at about 2300 there was a DHL truck broken down in lane 1. His electrics/battery must have all failed as his lights were off, there was JUST about a faint remainder of one indicator slowly flashing on the trailer. He was stood being the barrier with a torch waving his arms doing his best to try and alert approaching traffic. Would have surprised me if there wasn’t an accident after I went past. Not a good situation to have been in.