ROAD RAGE
Cold shoulder
“It’s five years since I became a tedious online conspiracy theorist”
IN OPPOSITION, Labour rightly demanded reinstatement of “hard shoulders on existing smart motorways”, which the then shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh blasted as “not fit for purpose”. Now, in power, Labour has reinstated no hard shoulders and is reducing safety scrutiny.
To the austerity-obsessed Tories, smart motorways were a cut-price way to add capacity by turning hard shoulders into live lanes, with emergency laybys and electronic safety signs supposedly compensating for the absent hard shoulder. It was soon obvious that breakdowns left people at much higher risk on smart motorways than conventional ones (Eyes passim), and the Tory government eventually halted further conversions and ordered annual “progress reports” on smart motorways.