Smart motorways were given the go-ahead because National Highways bosses turned a “blind eye” to safety fears, a whistleblower has claimed as he released a dossier of classified documents.

A senior engineer has said the Government-owned company responsible for turning hard shoulders into live lanes suffered a “systemic cultural failure” when told of staff concerns over safety.

The National Highways employee also accused successive government ministers of failing to widen motorways because they feared the “Swampy effect” - environmental activists, like Swampy from the 1990s, who fought road building with high-profile tunnel and treetop protests.

The whistleblower handed files from 2012 onwards to The Telegraph to illustrate how staff lodged safety warnings while other documents show how smart motorways could cut costs while increasing road capacity.

Advertisement

One leaked document warns how scrapping the hard shoulder could hamper emergency services’ efforts to reach life and death crashes.

In a review of a safety report about the M25 becoming "smart", an engineer wrote that it was “inaccurate” to believe fire, police and ambulance response times would not be affected.

He added: “There must be a higher risk of not being able to reach an incident scene with no hard shoulder to use.”

The "response" section from bosses reads, “access is achieved by closing lanes using [Red X] signals.”

But the same report records “significant concerns” that Red X signs closing lanes to...

Read Full Story: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/21/smart-motorways-given-green-light...