‘Catastrophic failing’ of smart motorway technology puts lives at risk, says whistleblower

Smart motorway technology meant to spot cars broken down in moving lanes suffered a “catastrophic failing” over the weekend putting motorists’ lives at risk, a whistleblower has told The Telegraph.

Traffic was limited to 60mph as engineers struggled to identify the fault that meant stopped vehicle detection (SVD) radar shut down across huge swathes of the country.

A National Highways spokesman confirmed that the “intermittent fault” was first detected at 4.30pm on Sunday between junctions 13 and 15 of the M1. The system was restored by 1.15pm on Monday and “ongoing work is taking place to avoid a recurrence”.

All seven regional control centres were put on alert as the SVD failures spread to different stretches of smart motorway – routes where the hard shoulder has been scrapped to become an extra lane – in different parts of the country.