Transport Insights

The roads minister has again resisted scrutiny over the provision of emergency areas on smart motorways, implicitly admitting that they do not meet the spacing standard to which the previous government said it agreed in principle.

As I have reported, the government has broken a pledge to consider adding further emergency areas under the new road investment strategy.

But, faced with parliamentary questions over current spacing levels, Simon Lightwood has continued to obfuscate, relying on a definition of “places to stop in an emergency” that includes locations other than designated emergency areas.

Having deployed this definition once to sidestep a question from Rotherham MP Sarah Champion about the average distance between emergency areas, Lightwood simply refused to answer a follow-up from her that explicitly excluded other places to stop:

what is the current average distance between dedicated emergency refuge areas, excluding slip roads and junctions, on All Lane Running Smart Motorways.

Lightwood replied:

My previous answer on 27 April 2026 set out that the average distance between places to stop in an emergency is now less than a mile (around 0.9 miles). Design standard GD301 sets out the new spacing standard (around 3/4 mile where feasible and 1 mile maximum) and defines what a place of relative safety is. The document can be found at: GD 301 – Smart motorways.

This obstructive and disingenuous answer not only evades the point about dedicated emergency areas but includes a crass non sequitur switch between the definitions of “places to stop in an emergency” and “a place of relative safety”.

The point remains that neither definition is what the last government signed up to in principle in 2022 following a recommendation from the Transport Committee:

The Department and National Highways should retrofit emergency refuge areas to existing all-lane running motorways to make them a maximum of 1,500 metres apart, decreasing to every 1,000 metres (0.75 miles) where physically possible.

As I have pointed out, even when using a separate definition, Lightwood gave a vague figure in miles as he was apparently unable to say that the average was inside the maximum distance in the recommendation from MPs.

In fact, GD 301 is in metric measurements, with the “where feasible” and maximum being 1,200 metres and 1,600 metres respectively, which broadly equate to three-quarters of a mile and a mile.

Average spacing of places to stop appears to be slilghtly less than this maximum, but only by using wider definitions and longer distances than the recommendation with which the previous government agreed. As I have written before, the government has colluded with National Highways to water down the standard.

And of course, with the average being slightly under or slightly over the recommended distance, there will be many cases where the spacing is nowhere near the recommended distance.

The reason all this matters is because people are being killed in stationary vehicles on stretches of smart motorway where the spacing standard is not met, such as the death of Kevin O’Reilly on an all lane running section of the M6 in June 2023.

In its response last April to a Regulation 28: Report to Prevent Future Deaths report from the coroner, National Highways said:

On this section of the M6 between junction 11a and junction 12 the distance between places to stop is 1.9km (1.2 miles).

In October 2020, a new standard was published (GD 3011) which requires places to stop to be provided at a maximum spacing of 1.6km (1 mile), and where possible 1.2km (0.75 miles). This standard would be used for all new ALR schemes from this date forward.

When a new standard is produced, National Highways is not funded to retrofit the Strategic Road Network (SRN) but to apply the new standard in any new works/designs. Currently, there are no plans for the addition of more emergency areas to this section of the M6 motorway.

That is the situation that Lightwood is happy to tolerate. While he quotes the standard, he does not admit that it is not being met and that his government will not fund National Highways to ensure that it is.