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Smart Motorways

Incidentally, a manager circulated an email at work directly before Christmas, warning of changes to speed camera settings on the M1, down to 70mph.

It took less than a minute with Google to find a statement from Highways England, that they knew nothing of such changes. I suspect that most, probably all, of the above figures that deviate from +10% and comments about changes are yet more internet Chinese whispers and folklore.

Be logical for once - if cameras were set to 70mph, and everyone, assuming no cruise control, stuck to 70mph, how many prosecutions would there be for 70.5, 71mph? How much data to sort? Or are people suggesting that anything below, say, 72mph would be ignored?

ACPO must have a website, surely?
 
Rug Doc said:
Interesting how the approved distance for refuge areas was 500m them increased to 2500m without consultation with advisors by the contractors...

I see liability there for negligence.
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The descriptions of what it feels like to break down in the live lane are harrowing. Plus we learn that they are not smart at all, you have to wait for a human to spot you before anything is done, the idea of the left lane magically transforming into a hard shoulder on demand is complete fiction (and apparently this kind of dynamic lane is on the way out anyway).

Personally I'd restore all the hard shoulders (just a paint job!) at least until they've figured out how to make this work and actually installed the necessary technology.

In the end though it is a trade off between capacity/speed and how much death, injuries and trauma are an acceptable price.

Tim
 
Vinny said:
Be logical for once - if cameras were set to 70mph, and everyone, assuming no cruise control, stuck to 70mph, how many prosecutions would there be for 70.5, 71mph? How much data to sort? Or are people suggesting that anything below, say, 72mph would be ignored?

ACPO must have a website, surely?
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ACPO is now the NPCC:

https://www.npcc.police.uk/FreedomofInformation/logoperations/2018.aspx

That contains a link to a pdf document 'speed enforcement guidance' which is itself an interesting read, and talks about proportionality, and assessing the risk of speed in the circumstances. Which rather mitigates against leaving cameras 'always on' on motorways.

There's a table at section 9.6 which I can't copy and paste, but broadly:

30 limit: fixed penalty >35, speed awareness 34-42, as appropriate (or NIP if not), summons for everything 50 and above;

70 limit: fixed penalty >79, speed awareness 79-86, as appropriate (or NIP if not), summons for everything above 96 regardless.

This is clearly the 10% +2 rule talked about above.

Caveat: this was the policy until 2015 so may have changed, but the principles of proportionality haven't changed much, if at all, so I doubt the guidelines have shifted much in the meantime. Certainly not down to the near-zero-tolerance thresholds suggested by some of the social media bollocks you see.
 
onlyconnect said:
The descriptions of what it feels like to break down in the live lane are harrowing...............................................
Tim
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Tim - have a listen to the R4 link, getting found is not entirely down to a human seeing you, but it varies and is not, not surprisingly, anything like instant most of the time.

As for breaking down in the outside lane..... It was over 20 years ago now, but I was doing more than 70 in the outside lane of the M25 at around 6.00pm on a weekday - it was BUSY, when the cam-follower on the distributor contact arm snapped. Amazingly, I did manage to coast through the horrendous traffic onto the hard shoulder, the main problem being that I had to use my indicators to indicate left, so could not switch on the hazard warning lights.
 
onlyconnect said:
Watching Panorama. Horrible.

Tim
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Great how they've still to get all the incident detecting cameras working but they made sure the speed cameras have been installed and fully operational. Oh and the the advice to sit in your car if you break down in a live lane (most likely since the contractors decided on 2.5k intervals instead of the agreed 500m) for anything up to 30 minutes and this assumes that the incident detecting cameras have actually picked up your broken down car. Sorry, if I break down, I'll try and get the car as far left as possible (if I'm lucky enough to be in the nearside lane) and be jumping out sharpish!
Vinny said:
Tim - have a listen to the R4 link, getting found is not entirely down to a human seeing you, but it varies and is not, not surprisingly, anything like instant most of the time.

As for breaking down in the outside lane..... It was over 20 years ago now, but I was doing more than 70 in the outside lane of the M25 at around 6.00pm on a weekday - it was BUSY, when the cam-follower on the distributor contact arm snapped. Amazingly, I did manage to coast through the horrendous traffic onto the hard shoulder, the main problem being that I had to use my indicators to indicate left, so could not switch on the hazard warning lights.
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I had to the same thing on the way to London on the M1 many years ago when the cam belt on my then VW Corrado snapped! Getting across 3 lanes while losing speed was a bit of challenge. Like you, indicating Left and then switching to hazards for each manoeuvre was a challenge. Big relief when I finally got to the hard shoulder and all helped by that stretch of motorway being on a decent.

I do around 25k a year and have wondered now what I'd do if I broke down on a Smart Motorway if I couldn't get to a refuge area. TBH, I think I'd just get out ASAP. I'm not sitting in the car waiting for the next vehicle to slam into the back of me while waiting to be hopefully spotted by the incident cameras (assuming they're even working or being manned). Ironic that they made sure all the speed cameras are working though...
 
Rack Kit said:
I do around 25k a year and have wondered now what I'd do if I broke down on a Smart Motorway if I couldn't get to a refuge area. TBH, I think I'd just get out ASAP.
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Exactly what you should do and exactly what they advise you to do. Get out and stand on the other side of the Armco. The same goes for a car in a conventional hard shoulder.
 
'Smart' M'ways are just wrong. They seem to impose a uniform maximum speed which leads to even more of a procession than before. It just feels wrong.
More importantly, the only time I've seen the 'lane blocked' signs they were completely wrong, and changing, for bloody miles before the incident, with the result that drivers were dodging about all over the bloody shop.. some clearly trying to do the 'right thing', and others trying to 'steal a march'. Very confusing, and very dangerous.
 
stevec67 said:
Exactly what you should do and exactly what they advise you to do. Get out and stand on the other side of the Armco. The same goes for a car in a conventional hard shoulder.
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Only so long as you can get behind some Armco. Otherwise, you are better off staying in your vehicle.
 
Over the last few years I've done a load of driving up and down between Edinburgh and London and eventually pretty much stopped using the M1 & M6 due to the work on smart motorways, switching to the A1M and M11 instead. That was more down to roadworks (including periods at night when the M1 was either completely closed or down to a single lane) than the Smart Motorways themselves, however my experience with those is that they can be quite useful on urban motorways but are less of a good idea on longer stretches due the same concerns as mentioned before about hard shoulders etc. Lane discipline on the M1 is bad enough without any extra confusion.
 
Smart motorways require smart drivers. And that’s where it fails.
 
stevec67 said:
Exactly what you should do and exactly what they advise you to do. Get out and stand on the other side of the Armco. The same goes for a car in a conventional hard shoulder.
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Obviously. I was referring the advise to stay in you car on a smart motorway ie a 'live lane'. Fook that. I'm getting out as soon as it's safe to do so. (safe with cars coming at you doing 70+ mph).
 
The reality of breaking down on a busy (or even moderately busy) motorway comes as a shock the first time you experience it. The first thing that hits is the noise. It's very difficult to use a mobile, or an emergency phone, because you can't hear a bloody thing. Next is the way that passing heavy vehicles literally rock your car with their slipstream. All very disconcerting. Add in rain and dark and it becomes quite terrifying. And all of the above assumes you have made it onto a hard shoulder... or that there even is one. Doing away with hard shoulders, especially on the busiest sections of m'way.. is irresponsible lunacy and cynical in the extreme.
 
My last roadside wheel change was on the M1-M42 interchange on a wintry Friday night about 3 years ago. It was great fun. I then had to get home to Leeds on a spacesaver wheelbarrow tyre at 50mph. Rather dull, but great fuel economy. 45mpg from a Saab turbo, not bad.
 
Hard shoulders are dangerous enough places, without them also being running lanes right up until the moment somebody uses them.

Once travelling in a rail replacement bus northbound on the M1 near London, I saw a bit of congestion coming up ahead in the opposite carriageway. Lorry stopped in lane 1, and not far behind it, a body lying in the lane in a bit of a state. A few yards beyond that, a car, on jacks. My guess is the poor sod was changing a wheel on the offside, nearest the inside lane, and got dragged under the lorry by its slipstream. And this was on a proper hard shoulder.

Ever since that, I’d only ever attempt to change a near side wheel on a motorway, and then only in a proper refuge or shoulder, and with one eye on the traffic.

Removing hard shoulders is madness.
 
Vinny said:
Be logical for once - if cameras were set to 70mph, and everyone, assuming no cruise control, stuck to 70mph, how many prosecutions would there be for 70.5, 71mph? How much data to sort? Or are people suggesting that anything below, say, 72mph would be ignored?
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This isn’t the case, as it’s not legally enforceable. This is due, for one thing, to the latitude allowed around % error of speedos on both manufacture, and subsequent testing.

I’m not for smart motorways btw. It’s bad enough working on a motorway with a hard shoulder, never mind one without.
 
Andrew C! said:
This isn’t the case, as it’s not legally enforceable. This is due, for one thing, to the latitude allowed around % error of speedos on both manufacture, and subsequent testing.
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Wrong.
Not least, as I said, because speedometers cannot have a negative error, they must all give an absolutely accurate or high reading. In practice that means high.
If you want contact details for my ex, the legal person in the CPS, I can let you have them and she'll tell you the same.

In practice prosecution for less than a few miles an hour above limit is never going to happen. In part, hence the 10% high setting of speed cameras, to stop every-day petty nonsense detections.
 
Vinny - this is a play on words you have seized upon. "absolutely accurate or high reading", you said. This is what I'm getting at, and perhaps should have clarified as Such. A high reading on a speedometer is still an allowable error/lattitude, and by its very nature introduces a percentage error/lattitude.

It becomes especially relevant in AIM investigations what this kind of error/lattitude is taken into account when speed is a factor in the collision.

Legal levels for prosecution have considered this for at least the last 35 years, as your CPS ex will conform. I have applied force guidelines of 10% +2 for all speeds.
 
guest said:
Smart motorways require smart drivers. And that’s where it fails.
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Yes and you have to love the techy or modern sounding ‘smart’ being used when removing a safety measure. The possibilities for removing costly safety measures are endless.
 
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