Does Highways England chief, Jim O’Sullivan, know how to tell the truth? Or is defending the indefensible—in this case the death traps that are smart motorways—so integral to his job that dissembling (we are being polite) is now second nature?
At the weekend, O’Sullivan was telling the Times newspaper that “Bad drivers are to blame for crashes on smart motorways” https://smartmotorwayskill.co.uk/highways-england-chief-defends-smart-motorways-blames-drivers/
Then he insisted that smart motorways were safe, arguing that figures showed that “77 people were killed on traditional motorways with a hard shoulder last year compared with nine on the smart network.”
But appearing before the Transport Select Committee yesterday to answer questions on safety, O’Sullivan could not produce any statistics to back up his claim. Nor could the other top Highways England officials with him, Elliot Shaw, executive director of strategy and planning and Mike Wilson, chief highways engineer.
In fact, O’Sullivan admitted that fatalities across the motorway network were up this year although he couldn’t explain why.
Imagine you or I were called in to answer specific questions on the safety or otherwise of our work and didn’t bother turning up with the relevant information. We would get hauled over the coals and, in all likelihood, handed our P45s.
Not Highways England chiefs. O’Sullivan said that they were unable to “split” the nature of accidents between conventional and smart motorways because they hadn’t bothered. Told by committee chair, Lillian Greenwood, that it was “a bit surprising” that they did not have evidence as to whether motorways without hard shoulders (All Lanes Running) were safer than those that had retained them, O’Sullivan replied: “Do you know, I am persuaded that the difference is so slight that we would not have looked into it.”
It gets worse. O’Sullivan told the MPs that there is no issue with the design of the smart motorway on the M1. This includes the stretch where four people have been killed in the past seven months—Derek Jacobs and Charles Scripps in March and Jason Mercer, and Alexandru Murgeanu in June.
“We’ve seen a cluster of accidents on that section of the M1”, he said. “We have analysed them. We’re satisfied with the design of the smart motorway in that area.”
In the next breath, O’Sullivan admitted that “a number of lives” could have been saved if Stopped Vehicle Detection (SVD) systems—which use radar to detect stationary vehicles—had been in place.
Back in 2016, Highways England had told the committee that SDV would be standard in all new smart motorways and retrofitted to existing ones. To date, SDV is in place on just 25 miles of the existing smart motorways, 18 percent. Its absence means that vehicles stopped in a live lane have to be phoned in by the public or caught by CCTV operatives on their banks of cameras. On average, it takes more than 16 minutes for a stopped vehicle to be detected. Statistics show an average of 26 drivers break down in a live lane per day.
O’Sullivan justified the absence this on the grounds that SVD is “only about 80 to 90% effective.” “You can’t roll out something this complex on a prototype basis, “he said. It has to be “productionised”, refusing to commit on when exactly this would take place.
The Highways Chief also admitted that smart motorways with semi-permanent hard shoulders—so-called dynamic smart motorways—will no longer be built because they are “too complicated” and “confused” drivers.
So, there’s nothing wrong with the design of smart motorways, except that people can’t understand them and most are missing a crucial piece of equipment that would save lives! This is from the man who boasted before the same committee that Highways England’s new slogan is “Home Safe and Well”.
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