link to Auto Express Article here

 

It was so blatantly biased that we approached Auto Express and asked for the journalistic right-to-reply. We were not given that courtesy so we’ll publish our response here instead.

 

Hugo Griffiths believes there is “too much emotion in the debate” over smart motorways. Unfortunately, that happens when your loved one is killed or maimed on one. But he does a serious disservice in suggesting “emotion” automatically excludes “factual analysis”. Sometimes, it can focus the mind.

 

Thanks to public support, we obtained funding for a “balanced, measured, fact-based” 201-page report, The Independent Review of All Lane Running Motorways in England, which examines the evidence on smart motorways to date. It is written by Sarah Simpson, Associate Group Director for Transport Planning at Royal HaskoningDHV, a multi-disciplinary engineering and environmental consultancy. Sarah has 19 years’ experience in transport planning.

The report is the first of its kind and has taken over a year to produce. It can be read here: Independent Review of All Lane Running Motorways in England (smartmotorwayskill.co.uk) It was delivered to the government and Highways England on March 29, 2021 with a pre-letter before action and we are awaiting their response with a view to commencing legal action for a Judicial Review to stop smart motorways.

Hugo does not reference this ground-breaking evidence-based work. Indeed, for an article purporting to provide “facts”, they are noticeably absent from his op-ed. He does not explain the various types of smart motorways and that the single most important feature of the prevalent form is the removal of the hard shoulder–permanently in the case of All Lanes Running. The hard shoulder has been a fixture in motorways for 50 years because it was considered essential to provide a stopping place on these fast-moving roads for breakdowns and emergency vehicles. As the government has said it will scrap the Dynamic Hard Shoulder (DHS) system in preference of ALR, the hard shoulder is being turned into a live lane across the country.

The only statistically validated fact Hugo provides on these roads is that the risk of “breaking down in a live lane” is 216 % higher than on a conventional motorway. He appears not to like this fact, however, as he reassures readers that this translates into being just “three times more dangerous”, which is apparently less “scary” than the percentage figure.

We can only say we are relieved Hugo is not a doctor, scientist or engineer. In these professions a tripling of risk is considered a major statistical event that requires urgent investigation to ascertain what is causing it. If any of the above were to go ahead with a procedure or project under these conditions, they would be obliged to ascertain whether the elevated risk is outweighed by associated benefits.

As far back as 2015 it was recognised that “more vehicles stopped in a live lane were involved in a collision on an ALR scheme than a conventional three-lane motorway, and more people sustained a serious injury or die as a result.” The increase in KSI (Killed or Seriously Injured) is confirmed by Highways England’s recent “Five year progress report 2021”

Against this, Hugo lists the supposed trade-off benefits as lower risks of tailgating, unsafe lane changes, speeding and losing control of the vehicle. No evidence is given to back this up but they are introduced to support his argument (yes, Hugo is arguing too!) that smart motorways “change the weighting of the risks we face but reduce dangers overall.”

This repeats the line of the government and Highways England that “smart motorways are as safe as, or safer than, conventional motorways, but not in every way.” As Sarah notes, “this statement is disingenuous as it appears to draw equivalence between slight collisions and those which result in fatalities. I would contend that it does not matter if it is safer in most ways, if the ways in which they are less safe are associated with greater levels of more serious casualties or fatalities.”

Hugo states that “A huge focus of road safety is about managing danger.” When in fact, according to the Safe Systems approach—an internationally recognised standard adopted by Highways England in 2015—road system design should “aim to prevent collisions and if that is not possible, to reduce the severity of collisions in a way that ‘severe’ injury risk is almost excluded.” [ibid]

There are many other points that could be raised but most centre on Hugo’s confusing of his opinion with the “facts”. But we will conclude with this example: “Smart motorways are empirically, statistically, factually the safest type of road in the country. You may not like it but to say otherwise is to engage in a falsehood,” he writes.

It is Hugo that is engaging in falsehoods. Empirically, statistically, factually “ALR has a distinctly reduced level of intrinsic safety compared with both conventional motorways and DHS. Consequently, the rates of KSI are higher on ALR than on conventional and DHS motorways, which means they are not the safest “road in the country”. As Sarah’s expert review makes clear, “ALR is not a maximally safe road system, and risk management and assessment methodologies have not resulted in effective mitigation of the hazards resulting from the removal of the hard shoulder.”

If people are “emotional” or “nervous”, they have reason to be. As Sarah notes, “the United Kingdom has some of the safest roads in the world. It is therefore all the more striking that of all the smart motorway typologies, the one with the trend of increase KSI collisions has been identified for implementation in the future.”

Yours sincerely

Smart Motorways Kill