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Old 09-04-2019, 09:38   #6
Hugh
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Re: 400 more miles of the hard shoulder to be removed.

Quote:
Originally Posted by denphone View Post
Not being a driver myself how is getting rid of the hard shoulder going to help emergency vehicles , etc , etc , etc?.
They have emergency lay-bys in the existing roads where this is in place already, and they will put more of these in.

From the OP’s Times link
Quote:
However, Jim O’Sullivan, Highways England chief executive, told The Times that the new system was safer because emergency lay-bys allowed vehicles to pull off the motorway, separating them from fast-moving traffic. He said that one in ten motorway fatalities took place on the hard shoulder, usually due to vehicles hitting stationary cars from behind.

“With the volume, speed and size of modern cars, the refuge areas are safer than the hard shoulder,” he said. “You will not get a car or truck drifting into the emergency refuge area whereas they can and do drift into the hard shoulder. We are now well into smart motorway operation and the statistics we have are reliable. They are telling us that the safety record on smart motorways is arguably better than what we see on conventional motorways.”

On smart motorways the hard shoulder is removed to create an extra lane, with cars having to stop in emergency lay-bys if they break down. Variable speed limits are used to regulate traffic and lanes are shut using red Xs on overhead signs to signal accidents or broken-down vehicles in the road ahead. The system is used on motorways including the M1, M4, M6, M25 and M62.

A recent safety evaluation on a stretch of smart motorway on the M25 in Kent showed that collisions had been cut by almost 30 per cent, to 9.3 collisions per 100 million vehicle miles compared with 13.2 before the upgrade.
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