I saw two cars parked in lane 1 on the m3. About 2230 the other night.
Hazards on.
About 300yards from refuge spot.
All stood around chatting away as if no danger.
Just waiting for someone to plough into them…
In my opinion, these so called smart motorways are a step backwards in road safety, how many more people have to die?
From the link
“The judge was told how Szuba was driving well within the speed limit, had not been drinking or on drugs and was not distracted by any devices when he ploughed into the vehicles just north of junction 34, near Sheffield’s Meadowhall shopping centre”
.
(Just before any comments are passed by those who leap to conclusions without checking all the story.)
This will happen again and again and again.
Smart motorways are a ‘cost benefit analysis’ system. It is known that more deaths will be the result of smart motorways but that is factored in; it is only the money that ever matters to those in charge.
One day it could be you that is in prison for so called “careless driving”.
Anybody who believes it is possible to give 100% attention, 100% of the time on a long motorway journey is deluded.
ScaniaUltimate:
Anybody who believes it is possible to give 100% attention, 100% of the time on a long motorway journey is deluded.
Well it’s not just that, some stretches just don’t offer enough visibility, like bends or just being dark. These shouldn’t be called ‘‘smart’’ m-ways as there’s nothing smart about them; the ones where the HS is there but is sometimes ‘‘activated’’ during peak hours are more like ‘‘smart’’. 24/7 surveillance and bulletproof detection systems need to be in place before any m-way can be considered remotely smart. Not like now where you have bogus queue warnings at 2 am and 3 vehicles per minute for several nights in a row (m5 NB before the M50 junction) or fake warnings about lane closures forcing traffic to bump into 1 or 2 lanes for no f-ing reason because the roadworks have been lifted 2 hours ago but no one bothered to update the system…
So dual carriageways never had hard shoulders and maybe had a layby once every few miles but people didn’t see a problem with them so what’s the issue with smart motorways? At least on a smart motorway you’re not going to be coming across Farmer Giles trundling along at 20MPH in his Massey Ferguson with a load of machinery bolted on the back and front of it.
Conor:
So dual carriageways never had hard shoulders and maybe had a layby once every few miles but people didn’t see a problem with them so what’s the issue with smart motorways? At least on a smart motorway you’re not going to be coming across Farmer Giles trundling along at 20MPH in his Massey Ferguson with a load of machinery bolted on the back and front of it.
Most dual lane roads have some space on the side though where you can park (grass verge etc.). On m-ways it’s ‘‘safety’’ barriers all around so tough luck. Bonus difficulty points if you have a disabled person in your vehicle and need to asap get them over the barrier somehow.
Conor:
So dual carriageways never had hard shoulders and maybe had a layby once every few miles but people didn’t see a problem with them so what’s the issue with smart motorways? At least on a smart motorway you’re not going to be coming across Farmer Giles trundling along at 20MPH in his Massey Ferguson with a load of machinery bolted on the back and front of it.
National speed limit dual carriageways are more dangerous than standard motorways; including for the reasons you state.
National speed limit single carriageways are more dangerous than dual carriageways.
It is not supposed to be a race to the bottom for safety.
Standard mortorways are our safest roads to drive on. Why degenerate them?
Exactly^^^