Tag: road safety

• Smart motorway safety tech spend facing cuts, National Highways says

  National Highways has suggested that work to improve the safety of smart motorways might be cut as part of a raid on its funding to pay for increased defence spending.

  The coded admission comes in response to a freedom of information (FOI) request from smart motorway campaigner Claire Mercer, which sought to find out how much the company was planning to spend on the network under the third Road Investment Strategy (RIS 3), which began in April and runs until 2031.

  It’s worth starting with the part of RIS 3 that Mercer cited:

  Over the third road period, we expect National Highways to continue to invest in the technology needed to help increase public confidence when driving on smart motorways, like upgrading CCTV cameras to detect incidents that could have an impact on the safety of users or their journey times.

  There are a lot of weasel words here, including “invest” and “to help increase public confidence”, with the latter reflecting a refusal to admit openly that safety on smart motorways could be objectively better.

  

  If CCTV is to be upgraded, rather than simply renewed and replaced when life-expired, that could be an investment, but upgrading cameras “to detect incidents” misrepresents what they are used for, which is to allow operatives to view incidents, including those that have been flagged by other technology.

  But, assuming that there were plans to improve technology under RIS3, these are now under threat. After extensive requests for clarification, National Highways responded:

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  2026.08.20

• National Highways five years behind the curve on casualty reductions

  In news that will surprise no one, National Highways missed its casualty target for the 2020-25 Road Investment Strategy (RIS 2) by more than 10 percentage points.

  Considering that the target was to achieve a 50% reduction in killed and seriously injured (KSI) casualties in 2025 against a 2005-09 baseline, it means that the company also missed the RIS 1 target of a 40% cut.

  But the strategic road network did see an improvement of around 2.8% in KSIs compared to 2024, suggesting that if National Highways had made any effort to reduce casualties earlier in RIS 2 (something it has admitted not doing) there might have been fewer casualties on its network at the end of the period.

  According to RRCGB 2025: Road type and environment, published today by the DfT, there were 785 KSI casualties on SRN motorways and 1091 KSIs on SRN A roads – a total of 1,876.

  

  While this is around 2.8% lower than the 1,931 KSIs in 2024, it is only a cut of around 1.5% on the baseline (approximately 3,100), meaning that the total is only 39.5% down overall against the baseline, compared to 38% a year ago.

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  2026.07.30

• Greenwood takes “careful now” approach to cutting speeds

  With the government accidentally signalling how little it is doing to improve “the infrastructure that makes up our roads” as part of its road safety strategy, another part of the safe system approach – speed – is coming under the spotlight.

  Next Wednesday, the Transport Committee “will focus on speed”, questioning a five-strong expert panel in the third evidence session of its inquiry into the strategy.

  In a press release, the committee notes:

  Local authorities and National Highways play the lead role in ensuring safe speed limits are set on England’s roads, and the strategy commits to updating guidance on setting local speed limits.
  
  Wednesday’s evidence session will see witnesses discuss whether the strategy’s commitments on speed are sufficient to support its casualty reduction targets.

  

  I’m going to stick my neck out and say that if your commitment is that you will update guidance, it may not be sufficient.

  Meanwhile, road safety minister Lilian Greenwood has given further indication of how little the government is prepared to do to slow people down and make the roads safer.

  In response to two questions from Labour MP Fleur Anderson, first:

  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether her Department has asked police forces to provide data on repeat speeding offenders to inform future road safety policy.

  And then:

  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether her Department has analysed international examples of requiring intervening Intelligent Speed Assistance technology for high-risk and repeat speeding offenders.

  Greenwood gave the same answer:

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  2026.07.10

• Two cheers for small beer

  There’s a bit more from road safety minister Lilian Greenwood about this week’s announcement of £5m for four new schemes under the Safer Roads Fund, with an acknowledgement that the cash only takes road safety “a little further forward”.

  Posting on LinkedIn, Greenwood referred to awards to existing schemes at the House of Lords event on Tuesday and directly named the four new schemes, but not the individual amounts awarded:

  There’s a lot more work still to do. But we’ve moved that work a little further forward as I announced a further £5 million to support four new Safer Roads Fund schemes across the country:

  • The A188 through Newcastle and North Tyneside
  • The A1074 from Longwater to Norwich City
  • The A611 Hucknall Road in Nottingham
  • The A319 in Chobham to the A320 in Guildford

  

  People in the western half of England might wonder whether “across the country” is a bit of an exaggeration for just four schemes in the North East, the East Midlands, East Anglia and the South East.

  Meanwhile the scheme in Nottingham (which Greenwood represents) has had some press coverage, but there is still no sign of an announcement from Norfolk and the Department for Transport doesn’t seem to think the cash warrants a press release.

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  2026.07.09

• Just £5m for new road safety schemes

  The Department for Transport (DfT) has allocated around £5m for four new schemes under the Safer Roads Fund (SRF) but the small scale of the funding serves to show the paucity of the government’s ambition on road safety.

  At an event in the House of Lords yesterday, Road safety minister Lilian Greenwood was said to have “committed to further investment in Safer Roads Fund schemes”.

  The DfT has said there is cash for four schemes, which are in Surrey, Norfolk, Newcastle and Nottingham.

  Some of these allocations have already been made public. Surrey Live reported:

  Minister Lilian Greenwood is set to confirm that the road connecting the A319 in Chobham to the A320 in Guildford will receive £1.3m in government money, in a speech on Tuesday

  The Newcastle Chronicle reported:

  Key road through North Tyneside and Newcastle to receive £1.6m of road safety funding

  It looks as if some of these were the announcement of construction funding for schemes that received design funding in earlier rounds of the SRF.

  

  The DfT says the cash is “part of Round 4 of funding under the Safer Roads Fund”, with no decisions made on whether there will be further funding rounds.

  The logic of that is that the new cash is not just part of Round 4 but the whole of Round 4.

  Originally (in 2016) the SRF was £175m, but only £100m was allocated in the first round, followed by £95m in a two-tranche second round. The DfT seems to be counting all this as three rounds.

  Whether the £5m is a new allocation or reallocation of unused cash from the last round, it takes the total to somewhere around £200m.

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  2026.07.08

• To be fair, they may just be incompetent

  The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) seems to have lost more than the plot when it comes to finding out why National Highways did so little to achieve its casualty reduction target under the last road investment strategy (RIS 2).

  It is now claiming to be unable to find the information that the company has given it about what it did or didn’t do to meet the target.

  As usual, the problem is working out whether the ORR is covering for National Highways, covering for its own inability to hold the company to account, incompetent, or all three.

  Let’s go back to what the regulator said in its December 2022 First Annual Assessment of safety performance on the strategic road network:

  National Highways is working to develop and deliver an action plan aligned to its 2025 safety target

  

  But by the December 2023 report, the emphasis had shifted away from a plan to meet the target to actions within the annual delivery plan, except that:

  National Highways recognises that its Delivery Plan actions alone might not be sufficient to deliver the RIS2 safety KPI target.

  In its (July 2024) Annual Assessment of National Highways’ performance April 2023 to March 2024, the regulator was quite critical of the company’s complacency:

  …if National Highways had been more proactive in recognising the risks earlier in the road period and developed more robust safety plans sooner this would have increased the likelihood of meeting the target.

  And by the time of the next safety assessment (March 2025) the regulator was beginning to smell a rat:

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  2026.06.29

• Can AVs do it on a cold, wet night in Stoke?

  There are of course the usual platitudes and the usual spin in the Department for Transport’s (DfT) announcement of a new consultation of self-driving vehicles, but one aspect of the safety case deserves a bit of unpicking.

  Launching a consultation on a draft statement of safety principles for automated vehicles (AV)s, the DfT makes clear that the destination is clear and it’s about how we get there:

  the future rollout of self-driving vehicles across the UK moves a step closer

  consultation will ensure the technology is rolled out safely and responsibly, giving people confidence in self-driving vehicles while keeping road safety at the heart of their introduction

  

  And of course there is the usual bullshit claim about the economic case:

  the self-driving sector could create thousands of skilled jobs and help unlock billions of pounds for the economy by 2035, supporting economic growth across the UK, according to 2020 estimates

  These estimates were about the value to the economy of the self-driving sector, not the GDP uplift that it is expected to produce. Most of this value represents the displacement or restructuring of existing transport, logistics, and automotive spending.

  But how safe are AVs going to be? I came across an opinion piece in Traffic Technology Today by Professor Nick Reed of Reed Mobility, first published in the February/March edition of TTi magazine:

  When weather changes how pedestrians and cyclists behave, human drivers adapt instinctively. Professor Nick Reed asks whether automated vehicles can do the same — a question that takes on fresh relevance after Waymo this week recalled nearly 3,800 robotaxis over a software fault that allowed vehicles to drive into standing water on higher-speed roads.

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  2026.06.17

• “You are at the mercy of technology”

  AA president Edmund King has made clear that he is not going to stop banging on about “the massive scandal of smart motorways”, and in particular the continuing failure to close the gaps between emergency areas.

  King was interviewed by Rob Cubitt, managing director of Cubitt Cars on The Logbook, the YouTube channel sponsored by AA Cars.

  According to the AA press release:

  The conversation covered the state of Britain’s roads, potholes, smart motorways, roadworks, driver taxes and the impact on motorists and dealers.

  

  King cited the recent case of van driver Barry O’Sullivan, who was convicted of causing the death of Pulvinder Dhillon on the M4, in a case where the “smart” technology had failed.

  But he singled out the distance between emergency refuge areas as an issue that exacerbated technology failings:

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  2026.06.11

• Actively working on solutions that could improve safety

  A Tory council leader and a Labour metro mayor have formed an unholy alliance to bring the scrapped A1 Morpeth to Ellingham scheme back from the dead, using an unfortunate, but unrepresentative, rash of fatalities as a pretext.

  I have written extensively on this blog about how the Tory government secretly shelved the scheme, which was then officially cancelled by Labour on cost grounds.

  At the time of the cancellation, it was expected that the scheme could cost more than half a billion pounds and National Highways had already sunk £70m into it.

  Now, the BBC reports:

  Calls for safety improvements on the A1 in Northumberland have intensified after five people died in two major incidents just nine days apart.

  

  It’s a classic media framing: there have been two fatal incidents in close succession, therefore something must be done. But it looks as if Northumberland County Council leader Glen Sanderson and North East mayor Kim McGuinness are jumping on the safety issue to get capacity on the route increased though dualling.

  They have written transport secretary Heidi Alexander to urge the need for “action to avoid further fatalities on the road” but as the council’s press release makes clear

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  2026.06.03

• Not so Cleverly done: BBC bins balance, backs road building

  The BBC has a very poor, and quite late, report on the decision to cancel the A120 Braintree to Marks Tey dualling scheme, with no consideration of whether continuous road building is a good idea in a climate emergency, or even the only solution to a poor safety record.

  The cancellation of the scheme emerged when the Road Investment Strategy was published in March and it was removed from the pipeline of future works.

  Ministers say the project is no longer affordable, but some of those who live, work and travel on the trunk road are angered by the decision and fear for its future sustainability.

  

  Having admitted that it may only be “some” people who are angered by the decision, the BBC then devotes its article exclusively to those views.

  The road does appear to have an appalling safety record, approximately one fatality a year this century but:

  Average speed cameras were installed between Braintree and Marks Tey in 2025 and a new 50mph (80km/h) limit was enforced for most of the route.

  While it’s too early to tell what the impact of this might be, there will be statistics. But the BBC doesn’t need statistics, when it has subjective claims to rely on:

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  2026.05.28