New evidence calls into question safety of smart motorways

A Birmingham motoring lawyer has branded smart motorways 'a death trap ' after an undercover investigation found a series of life-threatening safety failures in one of the UK 's smart motorways ' control rooms.

Manjinder Kang, of specialist motoring solicitors Kang and Co Solicitors, based in Victoria Square, is calling on the hard shoulder to be reinstated on Birmingham motorways to save lives after a damning report found a number of technical errors meant CCTV was not always working correctly.

An investigation by The Daily Mail where a reporter spent six weeks undercover at the South Mimms regional operations centre found many footage feeds in the National Highways control room, used to protect motorists by controlling speed limits, setting lane closures and deploying traffic officers to accidents, showed “clouds, the ground or the message 'no input available ' ”.

The report has sparked outrage with the Department for Transport promising to investigate the claims.

Manjinder (pictured) said: “It only confirm my fears that smart motorways are death traps and an accident waiting to happen.

“Technology is not fool proof as it has been proven time and again and cannot replace the safety of the hard shoulder. ”

The motoring expert, who has worked on a number of high-profile cases involving smart motorways, including one four years ago where a van driver was killed on the M6 after stopping in live traffic with no hard shoulder, says the evidence just overwhelmingly shows that the only safe thing to do is postpone the controversial motorways until the issues are resolved.

He said: “Smart motorways provide limited safe places to stop for drivers to pull over and get out of the way of fast-moving live traffic.

“The fundamental make-up of the road means that lives are being needlessly lost and the only safe and right thing to do now is to stop their use and reinstate the hard shoulder.

“If you are travelling on a motorway where all other lanes are steady moving traffic and there is a single stationary vehicle in your lane, it is hard for your brain to compute whether the vehicle is moving or not and with it being fast moving traffic as well it limits your recognition and then reaction time.

“It is an accident waiting to happen and no amount of cameras or lane closure technology will help as incidents can occur in seconds of a break down.

“Lives need to matter more than congestion on our roads. ”