Amid ongoing debates about their security, UK good motorways proceed to face scrutiny as new knowledge reveals they regularly undergo from outages. Regardless of superior expertise, these disruptions undermine the system designed to safeguard drivers.
Sensible motorways utilise radar and cameras to establish autos in misery and accordingly alter lane alerts to handle the movement of visitors. Nonetheless, figures launched by way of Freedom of Info requests by BBC Panorama present – between June 2022 and February 2024 – there have been 397 events the place these motorways skilled energy losses, generally extending over days.
Vital incidents included:
- 5-day outage at M6’s junction 18 in July 2023.
- 5-day disruption at M62’s junction 22 in September 2023.
- Three and a half days with out energy at M5’s junction 6 in December 2023.
The problems weren’t remoted, with the six months main as much as February 2024 alone recording 174 outages — practically each day disruptions. The longest lasted 11 days at M4’s junction 14, notably a piece of the motorway that also retains a tough shoulder.
The absence of onerous shoulders on many stretches of good motorways exacerbates the hazard throughout these outages. Regardless of these considerations, National Highways maintained that reintroducing onerous shoulders would worsen congestion and insisted that contingency plans are strong sufficient to deal with such energy failures.
Nationwide Highways famous an 89 % detection charge for stationary autos by radar methods, albeit acknowledging 11 % of stopped autos stay undetected. Additional compromising reliability, the corporate’s personal 2022 knowledge indicated 2,331 radar system defects—with faults averaging over 5 days in size. A Nationwide Highways visitors officer anonymously confessed to Panorama a mistrust within the radar, citing frequent failures.
Sensible motorways, initially rolled out in 2010, have since been linked to at the least 79 deaths. Nationwide Highways’ statistics counsel a threefold improve within the chance of fatality or critical damage if a car breaks down on a sensible motorway missing a tough shoulder, in contrast to people who have it.
In response to security criticisms, the federal government in 2020 promised an escalation within the building of emergency refuges—aiming to finish 150 by the next yr. Nonetheless, progress has been gradual, with solely 13 completed and one other 34 underway.
The repeated technical failures problem the declare that good motorways enhance security, leaving many drivers sceptical of their advantages.
(Photograph by Mark Stuckey)
See additionally: FCC proposes measures to combat abuse through connected cars
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