Smart motorways’ horrors exposed: Undercover probe finds one in 10 vital safety cameras is not working… and the failings are so bad that staff are caught on tape saying ‘start praying to your God’
- A Daily Mail reporter spent six weeks under cover at a control room and discovered alarming problems
- More than one in ten safety cameras were either broken, misted up or facing the wrong way
- Almost half the cameras on one of the busiest stretches of the M25 were failing on September 17, the day of our audit
Smart motorways are plagued with shocking technical failures that put lives at risk, it can be revealed today.
A Daily Mail reporter spent six weeks under cover at a control room and discovered alarming problems with the deadly roads where the hard shoulder is converted to a live lane. More than one in ten safety cameras were either broken, misted up or facing the wrong way.
In one terrifying incident a worker said: ‘We’ve got no signals, you’re all going to die. Whichever God you believe in, start praying now.’
Earlier this year this newspaper revealed that 53 people had died on smart motorways in the four years to 2019.
Eighteen of the fatalities were blamed at least partly on the way the roads operate.
A picture of the National Highways East Regional Operations Centre based in South Mimms. Screens at the front of the control room are used to monitor the network and big incidents. Two of the CCTV cameras being streamed to the whole control room are faulty
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