Transport Insights

Following on from my piece yesterday about the safety commitments – or lack of them – in the draft 3rd Road Investment Strategy, perhaps the most important comment on the issue comes in a section not about safety but “A technology enabled and enabling network”:

National Highways should not be over-reliant on technology, for example drawing on insights from the use of cameras and stopped vehicle detection when considering driver safety and welfare.

For me this is a recognition from government that technology such as stopped vehicle detection (SVD) is not up to the job given to it – keeping people safe when vehicles stop on all lane running “smart motorways” that do not have a hard shoulder.

It can even be read as a repudiation of “smart motorways” themselves, where the word “smart” was used to imply that their key feature was technology, rather than the removal of the hard shoulder, or at least that the former compensated for the latter.

I cannot resist the temptation to blow by own trumpet here, as well as acknowledging the contribution of journalists and other experts in the field.

Along with my former colleague Dominic Browne at Highways magazine, I did a lot of work to question whether the radar-based SVD that National Highways was employing was fit for purpose.

Our work was picked up by the AA, which put it before a Commons Transport Committee inquiry, leading to regulator the Office of Rail and Road reporting on the issue.

Great credit should also go to the BBC Panorama team, who have done a lot to question the over-reliance of unreliable technology on smart motorways, including a programme in April 2024 that I was honoured to appear in.