This a million percent, smart motorways are only as smart as the drivers using them and everyone driving nowadays seems to be an imbecile
When did they break motorways?
- Thread starter chrcoluk
- Start date
The speed limit is lower because the road is congested.
And they spent the best part of 15 years installing it on the M4, non-stop roadworks......and then 'oh actually this is really dangerous'.
If you regularly travel at peak times an extra lane is a blessing. It's a tricky one really. 3 lane motorways in the UK now are pretty useless with the amount of traffic. It's either that or we need to stem the flow of traffic onto the motorway somehow.
Maybe I just believe people arent complete idiot's too much
I did my initial uni research topic on this and IIRC 99.7% of all road traffic incidents are human error. The most simplest way to almost erradicate this completely is automated vehicles. It's actually quite interesting.
Definitely this. Easy to blame the infrastructure.
Fixed.
Yeh or this, once we're uploaded to the net, jobs a good one
Well you have to slow pretty quickly to 40 for the gantry. They aren’t always phased downwards and skip intervals.
It can be difficult to move over easily with traffic going 10-30mph faster inside you & the trucks are often inside sitting on their limiters.
M6 south past stoke has been 60mph for over 4 years, the last 6-12 months it’s finished just “testing technology”.
Human error is such a lazy cop-out conclusion. In a complex sociotechnical system, the human is a key component for which the system specification must cater. Underspecificed systems and poor design are more often closer to the truth, but lazy engineers would rather point the finger at the end user they couldn’t properly cater with their poor design.
But in the case of totally human operated vehicles, human error is the defining factor of incidents. The vehicle didn't fail to notice the road surface change or the hazard ahead. The human controlling it did.
Also in the case of smart motorways, the motorway can only indicate change and has no way of impacting the driver other than visual. Like you say though there could be more ways of displaying this info or getting them to follow the instructions.
Deleted User 298457
Deleted User 298457
Or get rid of cars. But folk seem desperately attached to such a miserable form of transport that has destroyed our built environment indefinitely.
After reading the replies I did research into smart motorways, and found 2 criticisms.
Most were related to the hard shoulder and is an accident that happened where they didnt close it until too late, criticisms of the refuge areas been too far apart, I did notice parts of the M1 have no hard shoulder at all its a permanent 4th lane. Most of the M25 we was on was a permanent lane as well.
The second criticism was related to speed limit reductions when there is no congestion, I agree with that, pretty much all the 60 zones had no congestion, and most were driving 70-80 in the right 2 lanes. Hence my revenue raising thoughts. In the "maximum speed limit zones" as few as they were I didnt observe any differences to vehicle density or speed vs the 60 zones other than people slowed down before the camera signs briefly in the 60 zones.
Last edited:
You live in Norfolk.
I'm not saying the gantries are perfect / or updated in good timing. But what a lot of people fail to realise is that the gantries dropping the speed limit is most of the time because of an incident that they're now passing through shortly after it's cleared.
One main issue they need to clamp down on is drivers still driving through lanes with red crosses. That is dangerous due to a potentially broken down vehicle - these people should be getting driving bans, not just a NIP with a driver awareness course.
More research for you here, an article showing how braking alone can cause traffic to slow considerably: https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/driving-advice/traffic-jams-what-causes-them/
The YT video in the link should be shown as part of the theory test.
I feel thats kind of confirmation rather than saying I am wrong.
It confirms based on a test on a single lane of cars that there is chain reactions to braking, my OP did say I felt the jams were caused from a chain reaction of people slowing down for the upcoming low speed limit.
But motorways arent single lanes and this phenomenon isnt happening on A roads.
Regardless I appreciate the sharing of the link as it at least shows some science behind it which makes it more believable.
You dont think any of it at all is to do with revenue raising on the speed cameras?
My point (at least in my head) was that it happens on dumb motorways too, the YT video isn't on a smart motorway.
By your own admission you've not been on a motorway for 10 years. I suggest driving on a dumb motorway during rush hour and then reporting back how many times you came to stop without there being an accident or speed limit change.
It probably doesn't happen on small roads due to the lower volume of traffic and there being fewer harsh breaking incidents because there are far fewer overtakes etc. I'm sure I've experienced it on A roads before, especially during busy periods.
There most likely is a revenue aspect of all cameras, I agree.
Last edited:
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
I have to drive for over an hour on a normal motorway before I get to a smart motorway and can conform this still happens on a busy normal motorway.
Have you considered the fact that the busier a motorway is the more likely this is to happen and that it's the busiest parts that have been upgraded?