I had never heard of a ‘Smart Motorway’ till hours after I could see the high vis uniforms of 2 police officers, through the glass panel on my front door.
On Friday 7th June 2019 at nearly 8:15 in the morning my husband, Jason Mercer, 44, and Alexandru Murgeanu, 22 had a minor collision on the M1 Sheffield, near junction 34.
It was only a very small incident, which should have just been a bad start to the day. Instead it ended in a scene of “carnage”. with debris scattered across four lanes of the motorway.
It took many hours for the emergency services just to be able to work out “who was with which vehicle” and begin tracing next of kin.
Smart motorways had been sneaked in by the back door so the public could not object to what they didn’t know about. There was no signage telling motorists that they just joined a smart motorway, where the nearest refuge area was and what to do in the event of an emergency. As the large scale roll out of smart motorways had only been recently introduced the vast majority of motorists were blissfully unaware how they worked, or what happens when something goes wrong.
Jason and Alexandru could be seen on CCTV, after the initial small collision, trying to find a safe place to stop, but with the removal of the hard shoulder, their vehicles hemmed into a live lane of rush hour traffic by crash barriers and a 30 foot drop over the barrier, their options were limited.
When they did stop and get out of their vehicles to exchange details, they were left in a perilous situation. i.e. stood in a live running lane.
The hard shoulder of a motorway is a dangerous place, a live running lane of a motorway is MUCH more dangerous.
The sheer number of vehicles on a motorway and the speeds being travelled make it dangerous enough, but add that HGV’s cannot manoeuvre as easily as smaller vehicles and the fact that not all the technology that should have been fitted to the road before it was opened, was actually fitted, meant there were no warnings to following motorists of an obstruction in the road.
Jason and Alexandru were hit by 40 tonnes doing 60 miles an hour.
Sadly, this story is not a unique one. It is something that has happened to families throughout the UK both before and after Jason’s tragic, and unnecessary death.
To make matters worse, despite a scene described at the time as one of “utter carnage”. The technology fitted to the motorway failed. And because there was no hard shoulder, and the busy motorway now in complete gridlock, emergency vehicles were unable to reach the scene.
The air ambulance was called but by the time it attempted to land, it was too late.
But even after it was too late to try and save them and urgency was no longer such an issue, even then the removal of the hard shoulder continued to have devastating effects. The coroner couldn’t even get through to allow and aid the removal of their bodies and release the scene.
Jason and Alexandru were dead by 8:15 in the morning, their bodies were still on the road into the evening because of the paralysing effects of removing the hard shoulder.
I was already on the phone to the police, already terrified and crying somehow knowing my husband was in the collision that was all over the radio, TV and social media. I knew something was wrong because he was always dropping me loving messages or silly ‘gifs’, but now he hadn’t answered his phone or replied to messages in many hours. Even the ones I sent saying “please reply there’s been a crash” “please reply I’m scared”
I saw the Hi-vis uniforms through the glass front door before they even knocked, I opened the door just saying “is he alive”
My families lives were shattered.
Needless to say, it was devastating and difficult to know how to carry on. I hate the term “lose a loved one” it bundles all the horrible truth of the death in a tidy package. Four words covers: getting stuck in the traffic caused by his death because I felt I should be the one that told his family, identifying the body, reading collision reports, autopsy reports, completely “death admin” grief, making funeral arrangements while at work, the funeral itself, sitting through detailed trials and inquests and apparently fighting national campaigns.
Jason, like so many other victims, deserved better. Before this incident, I’d never even heard of a smart motorway; I certainly didn’t know that the entire country’s motorway network was scheduled to be completely transformed in to them.
The more I found out about them, the more I discovered just how dangerous the technology is. I learned that many parliamentary transport select committees, expert consultation events, industry insiders and the emergency services had all recommended that these roads weren’t installed.
Then I found out that these deaths were happening all around the country, time and time again. Normally it was an HGV that hit a stranded motorist because we’d simply built roads that didn’t allow for physics. It is nearly impossible for a small vehicle to stop in time when coming across an unexpected obstruction, when travelling at 70 mph, so a HGV driver stands no chance.
And an HGV being involved makes survival far less likely.
I started searching the internet about smart motorways, protest groups, anything related to getting the role out stopped. I found a lot of people that really didn’t like them, been terribly affected by them or were very scared of them, but there was no one centralised voice. I decided to change that.