Quarter of Motorists Don’t Know About Smart Motorways

Road charity Brake is calling for greater awareness of smart motorways after a recent survey revealed worrying statistics about motorists’ knowledge of them.

A survey commissioned by Brake and Green Flag found that one in four didn’t know what a smart motorway was, or the rules that came with driving on them. Less than half (48%) of 2,000 drivers who took part in the survey knew the rules.

Joshua Harris, director of campaigns at Brake, said: “These important findings confirm what we all suspected – drivers are confused about the rules of driving on smart motorways and communication efforts must urgently be stepped up to help avoid more tragic incidents on these roads.”

Smart motorways, with hard shoulders only used at busy times, have been a controversial addition to UK roads, with Highways England recently branding them too complicated for people to use.

The confusion around the rules on these roads has resulted in at least 38 deaths in the last five years, a BBC Panorama investigation found.

They are designed so additional lanes can be opened, depending on the volume of traffic, or closed if a lane has an obstacle, primarily in the form of a broken down vehicle.

The issue arising on these types of road is the lack of a hard shoulder means a broken down vehicle has nowhere to go if they aren’t near a refuge spot.

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