All-lane Running Motorways

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the safety of all-lane running motorways.

Last year, in June, my constituent Jason Mercer said goodbye to his wife Claire at 8 am. Fifteen minutes later, he and another motorist were dead. Jason had been involved in a minor collision on the M1 in South Yorkshire, but in March 2017 the hard shoulder on that section of motorway had been converted into a full-time running lane, so, with no emergency refuge in sight, Jason and his fellow motorist were forced to stop in a live lane to exchange details. A steep bank immediately behind the safety barrier meant there was nowhere to move off the road, and instead they were left exposed. A lorry hit one of the stationary vehicles, killing them both instantly.

The safety features promised when the motorway was converted have still not been installed. Jason is one of the growing number of victims of so-called “smart motorways” on which the flow of traffic is controlled by remotely adjustable speed limits. Specifically, Jason was killed on the all-lane running, or ALR, motorway on which the hard shoulder has been permanently removed. Tragically, Jason is not the only victim of that ill-conceived scheme. That same 16-mile section of the M1 has seen five fatalities in just 10 months. Nationally, 2018 figures show 107 deaths across the whole of our motorway system and—let me repeat—I have had five fatalities in the past 10 months, in near-identical circumstances, on 16 miles of road. I acknowledge that ALR schemes can deliver capacity improvements, but they do so at the cost of motorists’ lives.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising this important issue. Does she agree that that could have been avoided had police advice been listened to? In the Parliament of 2010 to 2015, I went to see the Minister’s predecessor with the South Yorkshire police, who had said, “This arrangement is not safe.” Recently, Chief Inspector Darren Starkey of the South Yorkshire police wrote to me that

“any stranded vehicle, in any live lane or carriageway on any motorway or other strategic road presents an immediate safety risk”,

but that when there is a hard shoulder, those

“risks are less than being in the live lane”.

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point and for all his campaigning on the issue. It was not only the police but the local authorities, the other emergency services, the RAC and the AA—everyone with any common sense knew that taking away the hard shoulder was going to lead to fatalities.

Hazards presented by the removal of the hard shoulder are manifold. The hard shoulder allows stricken motorists to stop in relative safety, outside the flow of traffic. In its absence, at a minimum, there should be emergency refuges along the carriageway. Mr O’Sullivan, the chief executive of Highways England, recently revealed to the Select Committee on Transport that 38% of all breakdowns on ALR motorways took place in live lanes, not in refuges. Even having refuges, therefore, does not keep people safe.

Dev Naran, a young constituent of mine, lost his life suddenly in 2018 in an accident on the M6. His parents are in Parliament today. The coroner’s regulation 28 report on his death raised some of the huge issues that the hon. Lady is exploring: despite the name, there is no automated system for spotting broken-down vehicles and where there is, at one place on the M25, it is overwhelmed by false positives; we do not know how often screens that are used manually to look for broken-down vehicles are refreshed, or how many screens an individual has to look at; and there is no consistency in the spacing of refuges, as she said, and huge stretches have no refuges at all. Officials have been too blithe about the problems she is pointing out. I hope that the Minister will stand up to the officials and take the huge problems seriously.

I echo those concerns, and the hon. Gentleman’s hope that the Minister will now do something. My heart bleeds for the families.

Reaching safety is particularly challenging in newer schemes, where refuges are being spaced further and further apart. The M42 active traffic management pilot placed refuges 500 to 800 metres apart, but in newer ALR schemes that has increased to roughly 2,500 metres. To be explicit, someone needs to travel 2.5 kilometres, or just over 1.5 miles—with a blow-out or an overheating engine, or after being in an accident—before being able to get out of a live traffic lane. The greater the distance between refuges, therefore, the less likely it is that a motorist will be able to reach safety. Motorists are instead left exposed, stopped in live traffic. I can only assume—I am sorry to say this—that that decision was made to save the Government money.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I will, multiply.

Does the hon. Lady agree that not only motorists but workers in recovery vehicles need extra protection from smart motorways? One way of achieving that might be to enable those workers to use red lights rather than the simple amber lights that they use at the moment. That would afford them greater protection from other vehicles that might otherwise not see them on the road.

I will come on to the existing lighting system, but yes, motorway rescue is walking into a death trap.

Does the hon. Lady agree that one way in which to deal with the situation is to increase the speed at which the gantry signs change to close the lanes, so that people have more warning? Does she also agree that we need quicker access for the emergency services to deal with accidents when they happen?

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I will come on to the reality of the stopped-vehicle protection system, which unfortunately is somewhat shocking.

The smart motorway is meant to be smart, and its systems should come into play—for example, to close lanes to traffic automatically—but that of course relies on the stranded vehicle being detected. It pains me to say, however, that the vast majority of England’s smart motorways are unable to deliver on that. Almost all smart motorways are underpinned by Highways England’s MIDAS—motorway incident detection and automatic signalling—system which, by monitoring traffic flow, allows congestion to be managed. But the system has a significant and life-limiting flaw: it is unable to identify a lone stationary vehicle.

A 2016 Highways England report found that detecting a stranded vehicle took an average of 17 minutes. Safety is compromised still further by Highways England allowing up to three minutes to close a lane once a stationary vehicle has been detected. In Jason Mercer’s case, detecting his stationary vehicle took more than six minutes, and the lane in which he was stranded was only closed after the crash that claimed his life.

Stationary vehicle detection, or SVD, technology reduces the time taken to spot stranded vehicles by an average of 16 minutes. Highways England committed to fitting SVD throughout the smart motorway system in 2016. That has not happened. Four years on, SVD is in operation on only two sections of the M25, covering just 24 miles of England’s more than 230 miles of smart motorway. The Highways England chief executive acknowledged that, had SVD been installed, a number of fatalities on all-lane running motorways could have been prevented.

Even where SVD is in place, questions remain about its effectiveness.

I thank my hon. Friend for securing a debate on this incredibly important issue. Over recent months, sadly, there have been a number of fatalities and accidents on the stretch of the M1 by Luton. Since raising the issue, a number of residents have echoed concerns about the safety of that stretch of smart motorway. Does my hon. Friend agree that any review by the Government is welcome, but that including in it all the voices of road users and workers is vital?

I completely agree, and I compliment my hon. Friend on already raising the issue in the Chamber. The consultation was always flawed, and all the evidence mounting is just not being listened to.

A recent report in The Sunday Times revealed that the system’s own chief designer has highlighted weaknesses in the system, warning:

“The density of traffic at higher volumes means it is very difficult to detect stopped lone vehicles without an unimaginable number of false alarms.”

The Minister must not believe Highways England when it tells him that SVD is the panacea for safety improvements for all-lane running schemes. It is not; it is seriously flawed.

The risks to motorists do not end when a stranded vehicle is detected. Once detected, the system should close the lane that the stranded vehicle is in by marking it with a red X on the gantry. In 2016, non-compliance with red X signs was 7% to 8%. However, research by the RAC this year found that more than a fifth of motorists had driven in a lane closed by a red X sign in the past year. If a motorist is detected and lane closures are put in place, their chance of being hit by an oncoming vehicle remains alarmingly high. It will require a concerted education and enforcement programme to reduce non-compliance, and I urge the Minister to commit to that without delay.

My hon. Friend is making a passionate and compelling case. Those concerns were first raised by the Select Committee on Transport, chaired by Dame Louise Ellman, back in 2016. They could—and should—have been addressed much earlier. Some of those who tragically lost their lives could have been saved.

That is the sad reality. I will come to the Transport Committee’s damning quote. I thank my hon. Friend for her work, as Chair of the Committee, to hold Highways England to account.

The Department for Transport has been aware of the dangers of ALR for some time. Many risks were highlighted in the 2016 Transport Committee report that my hon. Friend mentioned; it concluded that the Committee was unable to support ALR due to fundamental safety concerns. The Department for Transport, in contrast, argued that ALR is not only safe, but safer than traditional motorways. That position is hard to comprehend, but I have tried to figure it out. It is based on the twisted logic of offsetting the safety improvements of a managed motorway environment against the hazards of removing the hard shoulder. The issue with that logic is that those factors are not exclusionary. It is perfectly possible to maintain a hard shoulder on a smart motorway, but it costs more.

By suggesting that the risks are a necessary component of the improvements, the Department unjustifiably downplays the inherent dangers. The Transport Committee’s report labelled that approach “disingenuous” and robustly warned against decreasing the risk of some hazards to justify an increase in others. Highlighting the intrinsic problems of all-lane running compared with other smart motorway schemes, the Committee was damning in its criticism of the Department. It stated:

“The All Lane Running design has been chosen on the basis of cost savings, and it is not acceptable for the Department to proceed with a less-safe design, putting people’s lives at risk, in order to cut costs.”

Motoring organisations, including the RAC and the AA, have been warning for some time that ALR presents an unacceptable risk—concerns echoed by local authorities and police forces. Yesterday, it came to light that the AA will no longer carry out roadside assistance on all-lane running motorways due to serious safety concerns. How bad does it have to get before the Minister will act? Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, in response to the consultation on the conversion of junctions 32 to 35a of the M1, warned starkly that,