Smart motorways evidence stocktake

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Putting driver safety first

How we are delivering the government’s smart motorway evidence stocktake

Our fourth year progress report

Stocktake and progress reports

Putting driver safety first

England continues to have some of the safest roads in the world. Compared to other roads, motorways remain the safest to travel on.

We want drivers to not only be safe, but also to feel safe and confident using our roads, including smart motorways. But there is always more that can be done.

The latest safety data for smart motorways (2018-2022) continues to show that overall, all three types of smart motorway are safer than conventional motorways in terms of deaths or serious injuries.

In April 2023 the Government cancelled plans for new smart motorways. The decision recognised the lack of public confidence and cost pressures.

How we are delivering the government’s smart motorway evidence stocktake

In 2019, the Secretary of State for Transport asked the Department for Transport (DfT) to carry out an evidence stocktake on the safety of smart motorways.

This Smart Motorway Evidence Stocktake and Action Plan, published in March 2020, aimed to:

• better understand what is happening on smart motorways
• recommend how to make them even safer

Since 2021, we've annually reported the progress we've made towards achieving these recommendations. 

Our fourth year progress report

Our fourth year progress report confirms we have now delivered and completed all our stocktake actions. This includes:

• installing more than 700 additional signs informing drivers of the distance to the next place to stop in an emergency
• upgrading enforcement cameras on smart motorways to enable them to be used to detect vehicles passing under a Red X or entering a lane beyond a Red X
• ensuring radar stopped vehicle detection (SVD) is in place on every all lane running (ALR) motorway

This report closes our action to issue an annual safety performance report specifically monitoring smart motorways. Going forward we will include smart motorway safety performance analysis in our annual road safety performance overview report which considers the performance of all our roads.

Stocktake and progress reports