More than 53,000 incidents of drivers ignoring smart motorway lane closed signs - RAC comment

With more than 53,000 incidents of drivers ignoring lane closed signs on smart motorways recorded since 2021, RAC road safety spokesperson Rod Dennis said: “These figures sadly underline the fragility of one of the systems designed to keep stricken drivers safe on smart motorways.

“The safety of any driver who is unlucky enough to stop on a smart motorway depends entirely on other people seeing the red-X sign and moving to another lane. It’s therefore terrifying to think that so many people have either ignored them or failed to spot them in the first place. The latter is all the more likely given the fact that on all-lane-running stretches of motorway, where the hard shoulder has been removed completely, it’s largely roadside signs that communicate which lanes are closed which are harder for drivers to read than gantries that span the carriageway and have signs over each lane.

“It’s for this, and other reasons, that we’ve called on the new Government to convert all-lane running stretches of smart motorway to either controlled motorways – with hard shoulders permanently restored – or to dynamic hard shoulder schemes, where a hard shoulder is in place for much of the day and night, and only opened to traffic at the busiest times of day.”