New reasons to scrap smart motorways before more lives lost – The Yorkshire Post says

Major research into the changes introduced on a busy stretch of the M1 between junctions 10 and 13 in Bedfordshire reveals that it slows journey times and is such a drag on the economy that it does not justify the costs. And it beggars this question: just what will it take, after multiple tragedies, for Mr Shapps to stop the conversions of hard shoulders into additional lanes?

After all, the very same National Highways report confirmed last week that the number of serious injury collisions on the M1 between junction 32 and 35 in South Yorkshire has increased since the motorway was reconfigured.

As Rotherham MP Sarah Champion point outs, little, it appears, has been learned from the accident in June 2019 when her constituent Jason Mercer, 44, and Alexandru Murgeanu, 22, died when Prezemyslaw Szuba – subsequenrly convicted of unlawful killing – crashed his lorry into their vehicles.

With coroner David Urpeth warning after presiding over the inquest into the double tragedy that ‘smart motorways’ without a hard shoulder carry “an ongoing risk of future deaths”, Mr Shapps needs to start taking these warnings far more seriously.

Not only are the occupants of vehicles that become stranded on ‘smart motorways’ put at unnecessary risk, but the provision of emergency refuges is also woefully inadequate. They, too, are an accident waiting to happen due to their limited space.

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