Tag: stopped vehicle detection

• Smart motorway shortcomings combined in fatal crash

  National Highways’ response to the coroner examining the death of a motorist on a “smart motorway” section of the M6 where the emergency areas are officially too far apart also raises concerning questions about the effectiveness of the technology involved.

  In June 2023, Kevin O’Reilly ran out of petrol on the all lane running M6 northbound approaching Junction 12 and was stationary in lane three when his car was hit by an HGV.

  Emma Serrano, area coroner for Staffordshire sent National Highways a Regulation 28: Report to Prevent Future Deaths in relation to the death of Mr O’Reilly, expressing concern over the frequency of emergency areas and that the motorway was ‘not monitored’.

  I wrote about the issues around emergency area spacing – and what the government isn’t doing about them – earlier today but what National Highways said about the role that stopped vehicle detection (SVD) played is very worrying:

  Having reviewed our CCTV footage after the incident, we determined that Mr O’Reilly’s vehicle was slow moving until approximately 30 seconds before the collision. Once stopped, SVD operated correctly in detecting the vehicle and triggered the automatic “Report of obstruction” message just after the HGV, that collided with Mr O’Reilly’s car, passed the variable message sign. Therefore the HGV driver was not presented with this warning message.

  So, everything worked as it should, but a driver in a stationary vehicle without access to an emergency area (in the absence of a hard shoulder) still lost his life.

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  2025.08.28

• Official: Smart motorway tech not fit for purpose

  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.

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  2025.08.27