Sevim Ustun News Today

There were 397 incidents when the motorway network lost power, which makes it difficult to detect when a car breaks down and can trap drivers in a live lane, from June 2022 to February 2024.

Fourteen planned smart motorways - including 11 that are already paused and three earmarked for construction - will be removed from Government road building plans.

Sally Jacobs, 86, spoke passionately on Good Morning Britain about the need for hard shoulders on UK motorways after losing her husband Derek to a horror crash in 2019 which left another man dead.

Derek Jacobs, 83, died when his van was hit by a car on the M1 near Sheffield in March 2019 after he had stopped in the live inside lane and got out of the vehicle following a tyre blow-out.

Collisions on motorways with the hard shoulder removed will fall under the remit of the Road Safety Investigation Branch launched by the Department for Transport.

Claire Mercer, who has campaigned for National Highways to be investigated over the crash which killed her husband Jason, 44 (pictured together), said the news was very upsetting.

Half of the safety cameras on smart motorways are not yet operational, meaning drivers could be avoiding fines for ignoring lane closure signs which are crucial for warning of accidents or breakdowns ahead. The roads, which can use variable speed limits and the hard shoulder as a live running lane to manage traffic flow, have sparked concerns over high-speed crashes. Yet Highways England have revealed that the camera network will not be fully upgraded until July 2023. Half of the safety cameras...

A widow who believes Highways England should be prosecuted over the death of her husband on a smart motorway is today staging a protest outside a police headquarters.     Claire Mercer, 44, said future deaths will be blood on the hands of the people running our roads as she prepared to mark what would have been her husband Jasons 46th birthday by placing a giant screen outside South Yorkshire Polices HQ. Mr Mercer died on a stretch of the M1 with no hard shoulder - along with another motori...

Two thirds of Britons think smart motorways are less safe than normal ones with hard shoulders and 57 per cent of people are opposed to their use entirely, a YouGov poll has revealed.  The latest findings come just days after Dr Alan Billings, Police Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire, wrote to the Government saying the abolition of the hard shoulder should be abandoned before more people die, branding them inherently unsafe.  The poll found 64 per cent of Brits agree with Dr Billingss c...

The widow of a motorist who died on a smart motorway has called for police to investigate Highways England after a coroner said her husband could have survived a crash on the M1 if there was a hard shoulder.  Claire Mercer, whose 44-year-old husband Jason died on the M1 along with delivery driver Alexandru Murgeanu, 22, said she hoped the inquest would be a catalyst for an investigation into possible corporate manslaughter charges. Mrs Mercer, from Rotherham, said: After more than a year and ...