The government has been urged to back calls for a five-year moratorium on ‘smart’ motorway schemes to allow for a proper assessment of their safety.

MPs on the cross-party Transport Select Committee say it should pause the roll-out of the controversial new layout until five years of safety and economic data is available and safety improvements have been delivered and independently evaluated.

Kent’s only smart motorway, along a stretch of the M20 near Maidstone, became operational last year and, in common with many other schemes, has been the subject of widespread criticism.

Chatham and Aylesford MP Tracey Crouch said: “The roll-out of an all-lane running motorway on the M20 is one of the least smart things to have happened.

"The Select Committee report articulates the concerns that many had and continue to have about its safety.

"I really hope that more can be done to retrofit safety features to provide some form of security to motorists using this stretch of road through Kent."

In their critical report, the MPs say safety risks should have been calculated before the scheme was extended to more motorways.

It accuses the Department for Transport and National Highways, formerly known as Highways England, of failing to deliver on promises to implement safety improvements for existing schemes.

The committee warned that available data on the safety of all-lane running motorways was 'limited and volatile'.

In a new report, published today, titled 'The roll-out and safety of smart motorways', MPs say that safety risks on smart motorways should have been addressed by the government and National Highways.

Safety improvements should then have been delivered in a timely fashion, says the study. Instead, promises to prioritise improvements were broken.

Huw Merriman MP, who chairs the committee, said: “Looking at the available evidence, smart motorways do appear to be safer than conventional motorways, even once the hard-shoulder is removed.

"However, this evidence is also open to question. Only 29 miles of these all-lane running smart motorways have operated for over five years.

"It therefore feels too soon, and uncertain, to use this as an evidence base to remove the hard shoulder from swathes of our motorway network.”

The committee make a series of recommendations, including ‘retrofitting’ emergency refuge areas on existing smart motorways at a maximum of one mile apart, decreasing to every 0.75 miles where physically possible.

It also urges the government to commission the Office for Rail and Road to evaluate the effectiveness and operation of stopped vehicle technology.

'Even though I'm an incredibly confident driver, I know I'd be petrified if I broke down on a smart motorway, particularly with a small child in the back of the car.'

Safety first? How a flagship policy on motorways has increasingly been the subject of criticism over safety.

You don’t have to go far to find concerns over the safety of ‘smart’ motorway schemes.

Kent’s only project of that kind became operational in May 2020.

At a cost of £92 million, the project between Junction 3 and Junction 5 of the M20 was designed to ease traffic congestion on both sides of the motorway over a 10.5-mile stretch with a reputation as a traffic blackspot.

Ms Crouch, speaking in 2019, was not alone in her apprehension, saying: "Drivers don't know what to do in an all-lane situation. I think it's scary.

"Even though I'm an incredibly confident driver, I know I'd be petrified if I broke down on a smart motorway, particularly with a small child in the back of the car."

Her misgivings were echoed by road safety groups, motoring organisations and others to such an extent that eventually the Transport Secretary Grant Shapps ordered an inquiry in 2020 – described as a stocktake – to examine safety issues.

That prompted a package of 18 measures to improve safety, with the minister conceding “their growth, however, has not always been well explained, there is not uniformity, and concerns exist over safety”.

He announced £500m would be spent accelerating the roll-out of a radar-based stopped vehicle detection (SVD) system across motorways where all-lane running was happening.

A further report, assessing the impact of safety measures was published by the government in April this year. It concluded that despite continuing concerns about safety, the policy would continue.

Mr Shapps did concede that whatever the data said about safety, “this doesn’t mean all drivers necessarily feel safe on them”.

Instead of scrapping them, he gave the green light to create more – at the same time demanding that the SVD technology be up and running six months ahead of the original schedule.

As to whether the M20 scheme will see any more ‘refuge’ emergency areas beyond the five already in place, it remains to be seen.

What we do know is that the timescale is lengthy.

National Highways has confirmed it “is taking forward the measures set out in that plan".

It continued: "For the M20 that work includes the roll-out of stopped vehicle detection technology within the next 36 months.

"Until then there will be extra traffic officer patrols on this stretch of the motorway and extra communication to help drivers.”

So, what do the figures tell about how safe these schemes are?

According to the government, in three of the last four years, the share of fatalities on these motorways was lower than the share of traffic carried, suggesting a lower share of fatalities occur on DHS and ALR compared to the motorway network as a whole.

That data goes back to 2018 – before the M20 scheme was operational.

Of deaths on smart motorways in the four years to 2019 – at least 18 of 53 were blamed to some degree on the roads.

Whatever the outcome of the Select Committee's report, for many motorists, what will matter most is that the smart motorway scheme proves its worth by improving journey time.

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