A government minister says people should feel safe travelling on smart motorways, despite recently announcing that no more will be installed.

Tory transport minister Richard Holden was speaking during a campaign visit to Stoke-on-Trent ahead of the local elections in May.

Smart motorways have no hard shoulder, meaning all lanes are used by traffic.

To make this safe, they have more monitoring equipment than a traditional motorway – such as cameras and digital warning signs.

Richard Holden has been a Rishi Sunak Transport Minister since October 2022. It is the first special role the North West Durham MP has held. (Image - CC 2.0 Roger Harris Unchanged bit.ly/41w2xFo)

But there have been calls to scrap them by safety campaigners who say they've led to a significant number of fatalities and serious injuries.

Mr Holden, whose constituency is in Durham, said he is a frequent road user but conceded there is a lack of public confidence in smart motorways – including parts of the M6 through Cheshire and Staffordshire – which has led to the government rethink.

He said: "I do a lot of miles on the roads, I drive to my constituency which is about as far away from London as you can go before you'd decide to fly instead.

"What I'd say about smart motorways is there is a lack of public confidence, or there certainly has been, and that's why we're putting £900 million into retro-fitting so much stuff.

This week, the AA said all smart motorways should be removed immediately. The government started to backtrack on promoting them in 2022. (Image - Bill Boaden CC 2.0 Unchanged bit.ly/40hoZRv)

"That is entirely there to address issues around, say if there is an incident, where you'd pull – and in terms of monitoring, how we monitor them more with the automatic stuff and more modern cameras.

"We're also getting more traffic officers on the ground. We're doubling the number of traffic officers across the country, physically on the road, to deal with incidents."

Mr Holden said this means there will be at least one safety area per mile on existing smart motorways and described it as a big step in the right direction.

He said: "It should give people confidence that if they do face an issue they're able to move over into a safe area."

Despite being forced to spend close to £1 billion on improving them, he nevertheless defended the current smart motorway network.

He believes the perception that other types of major road are safer is inaccurate, citing statistics that show there are three times as many deaths and serious incidents per kilometre on A-roads than there are on the motorway network.

This, he said, is due to the number and variety of junctions and bends on those roads, whereas motorways are generally straighter and have slip roads for joining traffic.

He highlighted the fact that drivers still break down in active lanes on old-style motorways, and cautioned that the hard shoulder is also a dangerous place to break down.

He said: "If you travel on a dual carriageway there is no hard shoulder, there never has been.

"You're still travelling at 70mph but there's no hard shoulder and there are sharp turnings onto it.

"The fact that smart motorways have camera monitoring and regular traffic patrols and refuge areas all adds to the safety of them."

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) said it welcomed the government's announcement that no new smart motorways will be built – but said most drivers want the hard shoulder back.

Their road safety manager, Rebecca Guy said: "It is quite clear that drivers want the return of the hard shoulder, and ultimately we need motorists to feel safe on our roads.

"That's why we welcome the plans to shelve the planned construction of smart motorways and hope that money will go into making motorways safer in other ways.

"However, an important thing we must remember, is that even where a hard shoulder is in place, live lane breakdowns can still happen, for example, if a motorist in lane three experiences a breakdown and cannot reach the hard shoulder in time.

"A hard shoulder is only a relative place of safety. Collisions and injury still can occur on the hard shoulder, which is why we will continue to educate motorists on what to do if they do find themselves in an emergency on the road.

"We are reassured to hear that investments in existing smart motorway safety features are ongoing, in particular the retrofit of emergency refuge areas which we called for during a Transport Select Committee evidence session."

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