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Highways England has chosen Navtech Radar to provide an upgraded stopped vehicle detection (SVD) system for smart motorways.
It has published a contract notice for a four-year, £18 million deal, having previously indicated that it wishes to get the technology in place by March 2023.
This provides a crucial element of England’s controversial Smart Motorways programme, under which the hard shoulder has been removed from some stretches of road, raising the demands on a near real time alert system.
The radar based SVD is aimed at detecting individual stopped vehicles and providing regional operation centres with notifications so they can quickly take action in setting signals to alert other drivers.
Fears over safety radar on smart motorways
Highways England has failed to switch on any new ‘Stopped Vehicle Detection’ (SVD) systems in last nine months
Claire Mercer s husband Jason was killed on the M1
Motorists whose cars break down on a live lane of a smart motorway will not be spotted by specialist radar on 95 per cent of the network because only 23.86 miles of carriageway has the technology, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
For the last nine months, Highways England has failed to switch on any new ‘Stopped Vehicle Detection’ (SVD) systems that use radio waves to spot a stationary vehicle and alert control room staff of the emergency within 20 seconds.