At the minute, probably running out of fuel.
Smart Motorways
- Thread starter Orionaut
- Start date
Soldato
- Joined
- 17 Sep 2006
- Posts
- 4,693
- Location
- Gloucestershire
Punctures surely?
Not every car will be perfect, you will never get rid of all mechanical failures or flat tyres. Once you've accepted that will happen, you have to deal with it, not just take away the hard shoulder and hope no one gets killed when motorway traffic runs into the back of the broken down vehicle.
If the smart motorways had been built as promised, and the systems actually worked, you might have a chance of arguing they are of an overall benefit, but when cameras are out, software crashes, refuges are a couple of miles apart, etc there can be no argument that smart motorways are killing people who would otherwise be alive.
This, I will never understand why we built a successful safe prototype in the form of the m42 then took all those lessons and threw them in the bin so we could include permanent hard shoulder running, ridiculously long gaps between refuges etc.
I've only broken down once on the M25 while going at a decent speed and my cam belt went....that was interesting!
The problem with this is you'd basically be creating a completely dynamic information chain that would be impossible to monitor and maintain (because it's made up of 'random' vehicles). So all it would take is a few failures / rogue actors / whatever to cause a potential safety issue. Of course you could make it partly self-policing i.e. throwing out outliers that disagree with the messaging from the majority but there will be times when there simply isn't that many vehicles in that segment of the road.
The advantage of centralised systems is they can be properly maintained and monitored etc rather than having to rely on whether Big Kev the drug dealer has got the transponder on his blacked out X5 fully operational.
They are definitely an overall benefit. We've had too many drivers on the motorways for at least the last decade. A motorway expansion in some form was long overdue. When there's no breakdowns / accidents they work miles better in rush hour than a traditional stretch of motorway.
It doesn't sound like they're as smart as they claim though. I always thought the systems were automated, so a broken down vehicle would trip a number of sensors and adjust the lane speeds etc.
They are not a benefit to safety. Too many people die on them because when there is a breakdown, the systems designed to deal with that do not work. They trade off safety for capacity, with the safety systems meant to prevent deaths either not having been built correctly, or so faulty they do not work properly when needed.
Just read the DM article to see what a dangerous mess the implementation is.
Deleted User 298457
Deleted User 298457
It is a balance of risk versus benefit. Cars hardly breakdown nowadays so a dedicated lane is not worth it. Other balances of risk versus benefit include lane width, street lighting, chevron distance (to alter speed perception).
If we only wanted to benefit safety the speed limit would be 30, or perhaps even lower.
It is a bit like the time, cost and quality triangle. You can't have the best quality at the lowest cost.. . etc...
This intrigues me too. Obviously we have little sympathy for someone who runs out of fuel, or whose fluids only get checked at the service (if they bother to service it that year), or whose tyres only ever get checked at an MOT and at which point they only ever fit the cheapest possible ones they can find, or the MOT flags up a "slight oil / coolant leak" and the owner can't be arsed to pay to have it fixed.
But if something like your alternator fails, or a coolant pipe bursts, or a turbo failure occurs, or a fuel pump fails, then this could happen to the most well-maintained car in the world.
Thinking back on my motorway breakdowns over the years, one was caused by a control unit failure in a trailer (which resulted in no lights at night) every other time has been tyre related.
Most tyre failures are due to running over debris in the road, it’s extremely rare for a tyre to simply fail through a manufacturing fault (although not unheard of) whilst road transport technology has leapt forward over the years, tyre technology in so far as puncture prevention and a tyres ability to run flat without disintegrating as it does on an HGV seems to have stood still.
How come you only ever see truck tyre carcases on the motorway though?
Never seen the rubber off a car tyre just at the side/in the road only big HGV ones .
It’s - as far as I understand - the higher loading on truck tyres that causes the casing to overheat and subsequently disintegrate, that said it certainly does happen to car tyres - I’ve experienced it myself on a Vauxhall Astra a few years back - I would imagine you tend to notice a truck tyre carcass lying at the roadside as they are an awful lot bigger than an average car tyre.
Both my Motorway breakdowns have been fuel related - a fuel pump in my 740i and the fuse for the fuel pump in the R34 Skyline.
I'd suggest that car blow-outs don't tend to shed the tyre carcass anywhere near as much as truck blow-outs do due to the weight difference.
I'd suggest that car blow-outs don't tend to shed the tyre carcass anywhere near as much as truck blow-outs do due to the weight difference.
Ultimately though you might be able to reduce it but you can't really eliminate causes of breakdowns, etc. or other incidents to a point it would remove the problem.
At the end of the day people in this country can't even do basic things like leave space for an emergency vehicle in traffic jams so who on earth thought smart motorways were a good idea needs their head examined - but ultimately it is probably about money.
At the end of the day people in this country can't even do basic things like leave space for an emergency vehicle in traffic jams so who on earth thought smart motorways were a good idea needs their head examined - but ultimately it is probably about money.
Mine did when I had a high speed blow out in the fast lane of the M1 at the front. By the time I managed to weave across the traffic to the safety of the hard shoulder, my front tyre was shredded.
Pretty sure HGV use remoulds a fair amount. Wouldn't be surprised that when you see these carcases they're from remoulded tyres. I could be wrong though. Running tyres soft with low tread and a high load isn't a good mix for any tyre, remould or not.
I hate smart motorways. Sadly my local main motorway is being transformed into one. Keep meaning to buy one of those keyring that enables you to cut seatbelts or pop a window. Smart motorways mean I must pull my finger out. One thing I'd not look forward to is trying to get a 3yo and a 1yo in a car seat out of my car quickly on a smart motorway.
Dumbest idea ever in the UK. Thought that when I heard about them first being introduced. Just nuts.
Dumbest idea ever in the UK. Thought that when I heard about them first being introduced. Just nuts.