Smart motorways putting lives at risk as safety radars break down at alarming rate
The Independent|March 18, 2022
Vital smart motorway technology has stopped working on one of the country’s busiest stretches of road barely a week after a grandmother died when her car broke down on another socalled smart highway.
COLIN DRURY
Smart motorways putting lives at risk as safety radars break down at alarming rate

Large parts of the radar system designed to flag broken down or stationary vehicles stranded in live traffic on the M25 are said to be out of order. Nine of the road’s 51 Stopped Vehicle Detection radars have not been working since Tuesday, reports suggest.

It means that there are effectively blind spots on the London Orbital where an emergency would go undetected. Such a failure is especially dangerous on smart motorways because there is no hard shoulder for drivers to pull into, meaning motorists who find themselves in a halted vehicle must rely on the radars spotting them instantly and closing their lane to ensure they are not sat in the line of 70mph traffic.

This story is from the March 18, 2022 edition of The Independent.

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This story is from the March 18, 2022 edition of The Independent.

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