Yeah - bugger off to one of those European countries you love so much!


Oh wait...

And yet, the smart motorways were supposed to be modelled on part of the M42, where the refuge areas were 600 yards apart and not, as we have in some cases, every 1 1/2 to 2 miles.
Corners have been cut, that study not fully reviewed and the price is people being killed way to regularly.

Also and I dont know if any studies have been carried out yet, there appear to be many more long delays when lanes, quite rightly, are taken out.
These actually seem to make the hold ups both more frequent and longer than they were previously.

The solution, as it always was, is to reduce the amount of traffic on the roads and not to keep on encouraging more and more motorists to drive.
Improving our rail services would be a start and making kids walk to school.
Less traffic, healthier kids, cleaner air etc, etc

We have more cars on the road so we will get longer delays - especially when you have a police force who don't care how long they inconvenience motorists as long as they gather whatever evidence they think they need. These hold ups would be 25% longer if they didn't use the hard shoulder. Perhaps if their focus was on keeping the traffic flowing then that would go a long way to reducing delays.

Yes it would be great if all kids walked to school but if the school is 4/5 miles away is that practical. Improving the rail service would require billions of investment and the destruction of some brown/green field sites - the tracks have to run somewhere and stations need building. Leeds desperately needs a metro - how much would that cost and how long would it take? How long has cross rail in London being going on?

Interesting comments on the rail service.
I would suggest that this has simply been a secondary thought/neglected for decades and the lack of a decent East/West rail service in the North of England is verging on Criminal.
It's little surprise that considering the time to go trans Pennine, that most people opt to travel by car but, this is just a symptom of how mickey poor the rail service actually is.
My lad now lives on the dark side and travels over to us regularly but, a journey that takes an hour in the car can take over double using the train and that assumes they are not either full or cancelled.
As for the time and cost of creating infrastructure, much of the increase in cost, compared to budget, comes from delays in getting the plans through due to bureaucratic waste, which then further delays the project as they repeatedly go round the circle again,
HS2 being a prime example - perhaps we should hand over our capital projects to the Chinese ?

Our rails service is second rate in pretty much all aspects

It would be worth investing or even subsidising our public transport to help reduce congestion but, some of our politicians only see the cost in pound notes without considering the benefits.

The IFS have suggested that the Tories will indeed need to increase taxation in the upcoming budget or, they will break their own spending rules.
With Income Tax, National Insurance and VAT already promised not to increase, I wonder who they will hit ?

Pensioners and the well off ?

How many dead people until the balance of that trade is unacceptable?

Smart motorways are a scandal - as WC said, they have deviated so far from the original (successful) pilot that what is being built now, is nothing like what was promised; even the Tory transport minister of the time has said that he was, effectively, duped.

I've actually been stranded in the fast lane after a multi-car collision fairly recently - with no hard shoulder available - and I can tell you with certainty that getting out of your car in that situation is a genuinely terrifying experience; and an AA man told me recently that they are no longer allowed to attend in circumstances like that, without a police escort. Madness.

It's strange how the value of "a few lives" can be measured by saving a few minutes journey time.
One of the issues with the "smart" system, just as it was with the old style warnings, is that the advice doesn't seem to change quickly enough, meaning that you tend not to believe what is being shown on the overhead signal and so many motorists still ignore the lane closed signal and try to save those few extra seconds.
As you say, extremely dangerous and it is costing lives, something which NOBODY is denying - madness

What? Their core support? I don't think so sunshine!

No they'll hit all their new voters in the 'Red Wall' - after all, that's what they voted for so they're gonna have to suck it up aren't they?

There were 1800 people killed in traffic accidents in 2018 - there were 38 killed on smart motorways in 5 years - so if we take your point then stop all cars because if 38 in 5 years is too many then 1800 in a single year is surely beyond your acceptable level.

Surely if you get out of the passenger side and go over the barrier then things are not that terrifying? So you would rather increased congestion - the idea that public transport will increase capacity is a nonsense. Perhaps if freight was only allowed between 7pm and 7am that might help

Compared to people who die due trying new clinical techniques its miniscule - progress has negative externalities. About 100 cyclists are killed every year so do we ban cycles, significant numbers get killed in police chases so do we stop police chases. As I said its a trade off - the world can never be a perfectly safe place - we have to accept life will always have risks and for a benefit of the majority a tiny minority will pay the price.