Smart motorways cause police to chase offenders for ‘miles and miles’

Smart motorways make it harder for criminals on the road to be pulled over, police have said.

The most common type of smart motorway — All Lane Running (ALR) — make use of the hard shoulder as a lane in an effort to reduce congestion, with variable speed limits in place to help traffic flow.

Officers say this makes pulling over problematic drivers a difficult task, though. Speaking to the Telegraph, David Blundell of the Police Federation said: “The difficulty with smart motorways is that they are difficult for the police to operate on, there’s no hard shoulder, so where do we safely stop another motorist if they have committed an offence or we want to give them some advice?”

“The answer is we can’t, and we have to wait miles and miles and miles until we’re able to do that. There are lots of questions that need to be asked.”

More than 100 miles of ALR motorways are currently in operation in the UK, with plans for 225 miles of expansion in the future. John Apter, chair of the Police Federation, said safety of officers must be considered when planning smart motorways.

Speaking to the Telegraph, he said: “The motorway is a hostile environment to be on out of the vehicle. Tragically, we see more people killed who have been involved in a relatively minor collision who get out their vehicle on the hard shoulder and are hit.

“We have police officers who have been killed or have been seriously injured when they stop on the hard shoulder. Smart motorways must take all of that into account as it does cause a greater risk.”

It’s not the first time smart motorways have come under fire, with one MP last month calling for a pause on their introduction over concerns for the safety of motorists whose cars have broken down.

In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live’s Investigates, Tracey Crouch, Conservative MP for Chatham and Aylesford, said: “We need the government to pause and reflect on whether we’re getting this right”, adding that their introduction should be halted “until we have a better understanding about how we can protect those who have broken down and the recovery workers that come to assist them.”