Author Mike Rawson Retired Traffic Sergeant
When a company which, by law is required to operate under a Licence, breaches the conditions of the Licence this is a matter of concern.
When the company is owned by the government which is complicit in the breach, this is serious.
When the breach relates to people’s safety, and results in many deaths and life changing injuries, this is very serious.
The company to which I refer is National Highways – owned and supervised by the Department for Transport.
The breach of the conditions of its Licence specifically relates to the ALL LANE RUNNING (ALR) smart motorway policy which has seen the removal of around 400 miles of hard shoulder from the motorway network.
Converting the hard shoulder to a live running lane, to improve capacity, has seriously compromised the safety of those who use these high speed motorways.
Section 4.2 of National Highways Licence states, ‘must, in exercising its functions and complying with its legal duties and other obligations act in a manner which it considers best calculated to ensure the effective operation and maintenance of the network, ensure efficiency and value for money protect and improve the safety of the network……………………
For more than fifty years, since 1959 when the M1 between London and Birmingham was built, all motorways in Britain were constructed with a hard shoulder because a broken down / stopped vehicle in a live lane was considered the most serious danger to traffic.
A motorway hard shoulder, always immediately available in an emergency, is present throughout the entire length of the motorway, and ensures the motorway is as safe as possible.
The ability for a driver to move out of a lane, used by high speed traffic, to a relative place of safety, such as a hard shoulder, is essential.
The removal of the hard shoulder does not protect and improve safety of the network, in fact the very opposite is true and the loss of life and the number of injuries sustained in live lane collisions is testimony to that fact.
National Highways is in breach of its Licence and of Sec 5 (2) Infrastructure Act, 2015, which states, a strategic Highways Company must, when exercising its functions, have regard to the effects of the exercise of those functions.
It is indisputable that National Highways has breached the most vital condition attached of its Licence and the company must be held to account.
4