Transport Insights

The transport stories you won't see in the industry-friendly media

Author

Chris Ames

Tag: road safety

  • Will Lightwood cover for National Highways…again?

    The Department for Transport (DfT) has asked a member of its own board to carry out the “independent” review of the snafu that led to thousands of drivers on smart motorways being wrongly prosecuted, with no guarantee that the outcome will be published.

    It has also admitted that National Highways is still working with the police to implement “a Home Office-approved solution to this issue”.

    The “anomaly” identified was that, while there should be a delay between a variable speed shown on a motorway gantry changing and HADECs cameras detecting vehicles over the new limit, this has not always happened.

    The DfT has claimed that National Highways has identified approximately 2,650 total erroneous activations since 2021, but the terms of reference for the review go back to 2019, when the upgrade of cameras began, “to ensure that everyone who has been impacted is identified”.

    In a written ministerial statement on 16 December, roads minister Simon Lightwood, who has made a career of covering things up since arriving at the DfT, promised ‘an independent investigation into how this technical anomaly came about, to ensure that lessons can be learnt’. 

    Transport Heidi Alexander has now appointed

    Tracey Westall OBE, Non-Executive Director of DfT, to be the lead reviewer for this independent review.

    I’m sceptical of any government appointed review being described as “independent” but appointing a member of the DfT board to lead an independent review invites ridicule.

    The terms of reference include who knew what, when?

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  • Safety strategy delay is a car crash

    With the government due to publish its long-delayed road safety strategy tomorrow and selected highlights being fed to newspapers, it’s worth going back to what the Times reported in August.

    Drivers over 70 who fail eye tests face ban in road safety overhaul

    Ministers are preparing the biggest shake-up of driving rules for two decades, including a reduction in the drink-drive limit

    The measures are expected to be contained in a new road safety strategy, due to be published in the autumn. 

    Today, five months on, the same paper reports basically the same story:

    Older drivers face eyesight tests, alcohol limits could be tightened and penalty points given for not wearing seatbelts under plans to improve road safety.

    The strategy is reported to have targets for cutting thousands of deaths and serious injuries over the next 10 years, which means, if we take them at their word, that a lot of deaths and serious injuries could have been prevented if it had come out a few months ago.

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  • A fine mess…continued

    With Parliament back in action, a Labour MP has asked an interesting follow-up question about the National Highways snafu that saw thousands of innocent drivers wrongly fined and many more speeding drivers escape prosecution.

    And got a total non-answer from the man who has made a ministerial career of keeping information from the public.

    Slough MP Tan Dhesi asked:

    … with reference to National Highways press release entitled Fix being rolled out after variable speed camera anomaly, published on 15 December, whether she has any plans to (a) contact insurance companies of or (b) provide assistance in any other way to affected drivers to help obtain a reassessment of their current premiums.

    It’s a good question but smart motorway cover-up minister Simon Lightwood made no attempt to answer it:

    Data has been provided to the police forces to enable them to start contacting those drivers who were impacted by this anomaly and allow the process of redress to begin. While we expect the number of drivers impacted by this issue to be very small, all those notified by the police will receive details on how to contact National Highways, who will consider the details of each claim on a case-by-case basis.

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  • Official: minister made up smart motorway “assurance” claim

    The Department for Transport (DfT) has admitted that a minister had no basis for his claim that he is suppressing a raft of evaluation reports on smart motorway schemes because an assurance process is “ongoing”.

    Roads minister Simon Lightwood made the claim in a letter to widow Claire Mercer, after she wrote to ask for the release of Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) reports that the DfT is preventing National Highways from publishing, including one on the stretch of all lane running smart motorway where her husband was killed in 2019.

    Although some of the reports are believed to have been completed in 2022, the DfT has claimed that they are still undergoing an “assurance” process; in fact, National Highways has said that the department needs ministers to agree a “comms handling plan” before they can be released.

    The POPE reports are expected to reveal the real-world performance of individual smart motorway schemes, including their safety and environmental records and their economic benefits, or otherwise.

    In his letter to Mercer, Lightwood wrote:

    National Highways does evaluate the economic impact after schemes have been operational for five years and we are committed to transparency, but this is a complex process, and it is right that we take the time to fully assure findings. This process is ongoing, and we will provide an update on publication in due course.

    But I asked the DfT what advice Lightwood was given on which he made the claim that the assurance process was “ongoing”. It admitted:

    no specific advice on the assurance process was provided to Ministers

    It added:

    …at the date of the letter I can confirm that Ministers were considering advice on the findings from the reports. As POPE reports contain a complex set of analysis, it is right that the process of assurance, governance and preparation prior to publication is undertaken thoroughly.

    Although this second part references “assurance”, it does so only in a “this is exactly the sort of thing we should be doing” sense, rather than claiming that such a thing is currently happening.

    It appears in any case that the process is now at the stage that the DfT describes as “governance and preparation prior to publication”, by which it means, working out how to spin what is obviously bad news.

    And the bigger picture is that, despite suggestions that the POPE reports might be published around Christmas, they remain suppressed.

    They must be really, really bad.

  • Ministers fail to publish road safety strategy

    The Government appears to have missed its own target of publishing its new and widely trailed road safety strategy “this year”.

    I have written extensively on this blog about the varying commitment to publish the strategy, as well as the boast from ministers that it will be “the first for ten years”.

    As early as 11 December – less than two weeks ago – asked directly by Tory MP Andrew Griffith when the strategy would be published, transport minister Lilian Greenwood said:

    The Government intends to publish the Road Safety Strategy this year.

    But, with Parliament sitting and just a day before Christmas, there has been a wobble, with Greenwood telling Green Party MP Ellie Chowns this week:

    My Department is developing our road safety strategy and we will set out more details in due course.

    As I have noted in relation to smart motorway evaluation reports, ministers sometimes say they are working on things when they have simply chosen not to publish them, but the idea that officials are still putting the strategy together – or ministers are arguing over the content with No 10 – is mind blowing.

    Greenwood also told Labour MP Juliet Campbell:

    We are considering a range of policies under the new Road Safety Strategy; the first for ten years. Details on this will be published shortly.

    I think that you can safely say that if ministers say they intend to do something and then don’t do it, you have failed.

  • Did Lightwood exaggerate speed camera fix?

    The Daily Mail has reported that National Highways is some way off identifying and implementing a permanent solution to the issue that led to thousands of drivers being wrongly clocked for speeding on smart motorways.

    The paper picks up on yesterday’s statement from roads minister Simon Lightwood and in particular the revelation that the problem was fully identified in October and prosecutions halted, adding that “speed camera enforcement on smart motorways was secretly switched off two months ago”.

    Lightwood also said:

    A Home Office-approved solution to this issue has now been agreed. National Highways will be working with the police to allow them to implement this solution as a priority.

    However, the Mail reports:

    But it has emerged that National Highways still does not fully understand how the fault occurred and a permanent solution won’t be found until next year. 

    In the meantime, when the camera enforcement system is switched back on, National Highways will have to provide daily updates to police on the times when they believe the camera system is not functioning properly.

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  • Lightwood makes light of speed camera snafu

    Roads minister Simon Lightwood has claimed that drivers who break the law “can expect to be punished”, despite confirming that tens of thousands of drivers have got away with speeding offences because of National Highways’ latest technology failure on smart motorways.

    In written parliamentary statement, Lightwood confirmed, but sought to play down, the fact that an “anomaly” over the settings on variable speed limit enforcement cameras occurred approximately 2,650 times over four years, leading to a similar number of wrongful prosecutions.

    But that’s only half the story. As Lightwood told MPs:

    Independently, the National Police Chiefs’ Council took action to instruct all affected police forces to cancel wider prosecutions related to infringements in progress, regardless of whether they were impacted by this issue. As a result, tens of thousands of people’s speed awareness courses are being cancelled, and thousands of historic fixed penalty notices and criminal justice prosecutions are being discontinued.

    Lightwood also explained why his department had covered the problem up for around three months, without explicitly stating that it had done so:

    Throughout this process, I have been clear with all partners that we must ensure our road network remains safe. We therefore took the decision, following a safety assessment from National Highways, not to undermine public confidence in enforcement and risk impacting driver behaviour before we had a solution to this issue approved and ready to roll out.

    He ended his statement with an assertion that the facts have proven to be wholly untrue.

    Compliance with the law is being enforced in a variety of ways across our roads, as has always been the case. If you break the law, you can expect to be punished.

    As I commented yesterday, if tens of thousands of drivers breaking the law cannot be prosecuted because smart motorway technology is, once again, not up to the job, that is a major safety issue.

  • National Highways races to play down speed camera cock-up

    The revelation that thousands of drivers have been wrongly prosecuted because speed cameras on smart motorways and elsewhere had the wrong settings is a major embarrassment for National Highways, which is why it is, typically, trying to play it down.

    I’m not sure it will boost confidence that the issue has only been admitted by the government-owned company and the Department for Transport (DfT) after a so-called fix has been put in place, but here is the headline on the National Highways press release:

    Fix being rolled out after variable speed camera anomaly

    As the Daily Mail points out:

    The scandal will yet again raise concerns about the safety of smart motorways, which are stretches of road where variable speed camera technology is used to manage traffic flow and reduce congestion.

    It’s fair enough to point out that too rigid enforcement doesn’t put anyone at risk but the story feeds into the general problem that, as the draft of the third Road Investment Strategy put it:

    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.

    This is code for saying that the technology on smart motorways isn’t up to the job.

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  • DfT adds insult to death and injury on smart motorways

    There’s a good write-up in the (Sheffield) Star of the current situation over the release of the 14 evaluation reports on smart motorways that ministers are sitting on, with the Department for Transport’s (DfT) excuses not fooling anyone.

    It features Claire Mercer’s reaction to the DfT being unable to say that there is anything other than a  made-up “assurance” process to justify the ongoing suppression of the Post Opening Project Evaluations (POPEs).

    The reality, as National Highways told me, is that ministers have to agree a “comms handling plan” before telling us how (un)safe the projects are.

    Speaking to The Star, Claire – founder of the Smart Motorways Kill Campaign – scolded the DfT and said she believes the “only reason” for the delays can be that roads minister Simon Lightwood is “merely preparing to spin what are likely to be very negative findings.”

    The Star does include Mercer’s allegation that Lightwood lied to her by falsely claiming that an assurance process is “ongoing”:

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  • Look over there, Greenwood says as active travel funding falls

    With Labour cutting funding for active travel and being coy about whether its forthcoming cycling and walking investment strategy (CWIS3) will include meaningful targets, transport minister Lilian Greenwood has gone in for the diversionary tactic of reheating the culture wars.

    On Sunday The Guardian reported pressure from campaigners for CWIS3 to include targets beyond the feeble – and clearly unmeasurable – aspiration to make walking, wheeling and cycling “easy, safe, and accessible for everyone” by 2035.

    On Wednesday, Greenwood answered – or rather failed to answer – a question from shadow transport secretary Richard Holden on:

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