According to National Highways, the fourth goal of enhancing the safety of smart roads has been overlooked.
The government-owned company admitted it fell short of its 10-minute response time goal to reach vehicles stopped at the end of September.
Three other goals were achieved within the deadline, including retrofitting stopped vehicle detection (SVD) technology to all smart motorways without the need for a difficult role.
It has also completed the installation of additional signage showing the distance to the next emergency stop area and upgraded all enforcement cameras to enable detection of prohibited lane violations.
National Highways chief executive Nick Harris said: “Clearly this is not the end of our work and we will continue to make further improvements to help ensure everyone feels safe and confident. when using our sugar.
“This includes plans to install more emergency zones.”
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Smart motorways: What are they and why are they being unloaded?
Smart car road involves different methods of managing traffic flow, such as converting a hard lane into a live lane.
These are known as all-lane running lanes (ALRs), which are used by National Highways to increase capacity in a way that is cheaper than widening the road.
But major safety concerns have been raised after deadly incidents involving stopped vehicles being hit from behind.
Then-Transport Minister Grant Shapps announced an “action plan” in March 2020, which laid out a new set of safety measures.
National Highways’ second-year progress report in May said four of those will be done by the end of September.
Large parts of the M20 have been converted into ‘smart highways’
What targets have been achieved?
SVD technology is designed to detect a stationary vehicle in a live lane in about 20 seconds via radar units that monitor highway traffic in both directions.
An alert is sent to the control room operator, who can view the incident on camera, activate lane ban signs on the rig and dispatch personnel.
More than 700 additional signs were installed at the end of last month, so motorists can almost always see the distance to the next emergency stop.
The pledge to upgrade 95 cameras enforcing red X-lane ban signs – used when the vehicle is stopped in the direct lane – by the same deadline has also been met.
The upgrade means the cameras give police the ability to fine £100 for motorists who ignore signs without catching them doing the act.
How is the response time target missed?
National highways initially pledged to reduce the average time it takes for vehicles to stop in a live lane, where emergency zones are more than 1.6 kilometers apart, from 17 minutes in 2020 to less than 17 minutes in 2020. 10 minutes in July 2021.
After falling short of that goal, in May, the company said “we hope to meet our goal of meeting an average response time of 10 minutes by the end of September 2022.”
But figures for August – the most recent available – show an average response time of 10 minutes 29 seconds.
National Highways figures show an annual average of nine people killed or seriously injured in crashes involving stopped vehicles on the ALR smart highway between 2016 and 2020 , with a rate of 0.19 victims per hundred million vehicle miles.
On a regular motorway, the ratio is 0.09.
