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As I write, just a little over 24-hours ago I was on my way to Heathrow airport for a flight to Munich and a drive on to Sölden in Austria, to participate in some ice driver training in a Countryman. Sadly, however, my early morning stint didn’t go to plan as a van driver slammed into the back of my Cooper S JCW GP as the traffic slowed for the variable speed limits between junction 8 and 9 of the M25. I managed to avoid hitting the car in front, but the initial impact meant the MINI wouldn’t restart. Shock soon turned to terror as I was marooned in the outside lane during rush hour, with no way of getting the MINI across to the hard shoulder and relative safety. After a somewhat hysterical call to the Police, then my husband and the recovery services, I had to sit it out and hope that both myself and the van driver behind would not become ‘sitting ducks’ at the worst possible time. Eventually at about 7.30am the Highways Agency brought the motorway to a standstill and then helped push me across. After being checked over by paramedics and swapping insurance details via the Police, I sat it out with the Highways Officers while waiting for a low-loader. It was then that the friendly Police biker highlighted to me something rather important. The news broke earlier this month that the Highways Agency plans to scrap portions of our motorway hard shoulders during peak times to help reduce congestion – a scheme known as ‘Smart Motorways’. I can appreciate the need to speed up traffic flow by using the hard shoulder as an extra lane, but going by my own recent personal experience, this is suicide for anyone whose car breaks down or who has been involved in an RTA as there is nowhere to go. But not only that; emergency teams will not be able to use the hard shoulder as a quicker route to get to the scene of an accident.