Saving money, taking away safety?

Plans are being discussed to turn the hard shoulder of motorways into another lane for drivers to use, leaving anyone broken down in busy traffic at the disposal of CCTV watchers.

It seems that more that 250 miles of motorway is being earmarked for this plan called “hard shoulder running”. The highways agency went £3 billion over budget and are now going to be saving billions abandoning widening the roads.

Converting a hard shoulder into another lane will cost £10 million per mile compared to widening the road, which costs £40 million a mile. They are also cutting more money by having fewer lay-bys.

With this new idea anyone that was unfortunate to break down on the chosen motorways would be trapped in busy traffic and their saviour will be people watching CCTV camera that will then close the lane via the gantries across the road.

Between 2002 and 2006 51 people were killed on the hard shoulder and 114 were seriously injured. Does this now mean that this terrible statistic will increase?

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