Smart Motorways

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Smart motorways or A roads manqué?
Technowonk on BBC breakfast peddling line Smart Motorways have more technology on them so they must be good.
Technically all such roads should be redesignated as A roads as the number of motorways is effectively being cut.
Lives at stake here.

[floo]

Smart until it all goes wrong!

[Harrowby Hall]

The M5 between Bromsgrove and Worcester, I think, is a case worth considering. The hard shoulder has been transformed into a fourth lane. There are stopping points at 1km intervals.

My opinion is that hard shoulders have been a defining point of motorways and a significant contribution to safety. Sooner or later there is going to be a major incident due to the absence of a specific emergency stopping lane. When it happens, watch the hand wringing ...

[Walt Zingmatilder]

The smart motorways are a social Darwinian metaphor for Conservative Britain.

[Aruntraveller]

The smart motorways are a social Darwinian metaphor for Conservative Britain.

It really isn't.

However, I do think we should be concentrating more on making drivers smarter - see the Daily Mirror headline this morning.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/driver-caught-doing-60mph-both-11896876

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Think of it though. The government are definition riddling here. Roads without hard shoulders were A roads I can think of a long stretch of Motorway at Swansea where the inside lane was designated as the A road.
Of course properly designating roads as A roads would mean that the government has cut back on motorways. So for political expedience for the car loving electorate they are now Smart motorways.

[Aruntraveller]

No disagreement there - just not seeing it as a metaphor in the way you described it. 

Are you trying to draw an equivalence between political expediency and social Darwinism?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

No disagreement there - just not seeing it as a metaphor in the way you described it. 

Are you trying to draw an equivalence between political expediency and social Darwinism?

Not really but it's come to something when calling an A road an A road is political suicide whereas turning a road into some kind of death race is not.

[jeremyp]

The defining feature of a motorway is not the hard shoulder. There are A roads with hard shoulders and now motorways without some of the time (bad move IMO).

Amongst other defining features are

- the restrictions on the types of vehicles allowed
- the fact that you have to hold a full driving licence to use them
- only access is by slip road
- no stopping
- no pedestrians or animals (e.g. horses)

Also motorway construction has different standards. For example there is a lower maximum gradient and a larger minimum radius for a curve.