Panorama 2020 E03
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🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00Tonight on Panorama, danger on the motorways.
00:07I'm stuck in the middle of the M6. My car's broken down.
00:12Oh, shit!
00:16Hello? Hello?
00:18Taking away the hard shoulder was meant to ease congestion,
00:22but dozens of people have been killed.
00:25It's destroyed me in every way.
00:28It's destroyed my family.
00:31The minister who approves smart motorways says they're dangerous.
00:37There are people that have been killed and seriously injured on these roads
00:41and it should never have happened.
00:43That's a broken-down car.
00:45Yeah, it is. We should film that right away.
00:47And the government tell us smart motorways need to be overhauled.
00:52We absolutely have to have these as safe or safer than regular motorways
00:56or it shouldn't happen at all.
01:16Travel news for South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire.
01:21It was a Friday and on Fridays we always went to Costa for a Costa breakfast.
01:27That was our little ritual.
01:29He left me at eight o'clock, kissed me goodbye,
01:34left Costa and drove past waving at me.
01:39Claire Mercer had never heard of smart motorways,
01:43but one was about to change her life forever.
01:51Ten miles away, her husband, Jason, had just had a bump on the M1.
01:57After a little while I realised I'd had no messages,
02:00so I started messaging him.
02:02Didn't get any reply.
02:04Sent another message, didn't get any reply.
02:07Jason and the other driver, Alexandru Magurnu,
02:11had pulled over to exchange details.
02:15This is the section. It's a smart motorway.
02:19The hard shoulder has been converted to an extra lane.
02:23They don't look that different. There's still that lane there.
02:26It's still there and just nobody knows how to use it.
02:31Smart motorways are supposed to spot stationary vehicles
02:35and then close the lane.
02:38But no-one spotted Jason or Alexandru.
02:41No-one closed the lane.
02:45We've got huge problems on the M1 at the moment near Sheffield.
02:48It's an accident. Three vehicles involved
02:50and they've had to close the carriageway in both directions.
02:53As the two men stood by their vehicles, they were hit by a lorry.
02:58Both were killed.
03:02I just turned and I could see two police uniforms through the door
03:06and I just said, the police are here.
03:08And he... I went to the door and I opened the door
03:13and I said, is he alive?
03:15And one of them said, let's go inside. And I said, is he alive?
03:18And my brain had just stopped. I wasn't being obstructive,
03:21but I just wasn't moving.
03:23And I just said, is he alive? And he said, no.
03:27So I just fell to the floor.
03:37This is the bit of motorway where Jason and Alexandru were killed.
03:42And what is striking about it when you're here is there are so few laybys.
03:47They're called refuges and they're miles apart.
03:50So when the two of them had their bump, there was nowhere for them to go.
03:54They couldn't get off the road and they were so vulnerable
03:58because all they could do was stay in this lane,
04:01which used to be the hard shoulder, but it's now the inside lane.
04:05And if you park up here, that is very dangerous.
04:12What have smart motorways done to your life?
04:15Ruined it. Ruined it.
04:17Jason and I got together relatively later in life
04:20and it never occurred to us that we weren't going to be together forever.
04:24I'm terrified that it's going to be a coach full of kids next.
04:32Claire's story matters.
04:34Smart motorways have become important in keeping traffic moving
04:38on the crucial roads that connect our country.
04:41The plan is based on one motorway in the Midlands.
04:47This is the M42, just south of Birmingham,
04:50and it's always a busy road and it's very busy,
04:54almost static sometimes during the rush hour.
04:57So the plan was to try and ease congestion.
05:00The idea was simple, to turn the hard shoulder into an extra lane.
05:05The smart motorway was born.
05:09What they also offered was live control and more technology,
05:14cameras to spot broken-down vehicles,
05:17lane closures to keep people safe.
05:21The M42 was a success,
05:24so 200 miles were introduced in England, with 300 more planned.
05:30They're now scattered across the busiest bits of our motorway network,
05:34but do drivers understand them?
05:38Do you know what a smart motorway is?
05:40I haven't got a clue, sorry.
05:42You've just driven through one.
05:44Mm, great.
05:46Variable speed, can be controlled,
05:49notify of accidents in advance, alternative routes, all that sort of stuff.
05:54So if you see a red cross, what do you do?
05:56Get out of that lane.
05:57What is a smart motorway?
05:59No idea.
06:00You've just driven through one.
06:01No, I know. I know that I can't go on a lane with a red cross.
06:04That's all I know about it.
06:06I think we're going to miss not having the hard shoulders.
06:09Why?
06:10Because it's a haven, a safe haven.
06:13What would you do if you broke down?
06:15I'd be in trouble.
06:18I wouldn't know what to do.
06:23So what are we supposed to do if we break down on a smart motorway?
06:29What we're going to do now is have a little scenario.
06:32The AA thinks smart motorways are so dangerous,
06:35they're retraining their patrol officers.
06:39You approach a car broken down in a live lane, lane three of a motorway.
06:43What do you do?
06:44All right, OK.
06:45Now, in this scenario, what I think I'd do is,
06:49obviously I can't stop, it's a live lane,
06:51but it's life and danger, so it's a 999 straightaway.
06:54Yeah.
06:55So they can close the whole motorway, can't they?
06:57They can have it all gridlocked.
06:58Yeah.
06:59They can block the whole lot.
07:00Yeah, it seems a sensible thing to do,
07:01especially if something's broken down in lane three.
07:03Yeah.
07:06Roadside rescue companies are often the first to hear from drivers in trouble.
07:12AA Emergency Service, can I just confirm,
07:14are you on a motorway or are you in a safe place?
07:17The Live Boys, is it big enough and safe enough
07:19for one of our vehicles to attend?
07:23I've listened to some of the calls from members
07:25that have broken down in that situation,
07:28and if they're in a live lane,
07:30they can't get out of the car on the left-hand side,
07:32you know, the advice is quite bleak.
07:34It's keep your seatbelt on, put your hazards on,
07:37put all the lights on you can, and dial 999.
07:41It is an emergency situation that we're putting people in.
07:46There's no arm, shoulder.
07:47I'm on the actual side of the M6, in a lane.
07:51You're in a live lane?
07:52Yes.
07:53OK.
07:58Stephen Lark was stranded on a live lane too.
08:01He broke down on a motorway with no hard shoulder
08:05and was stuck there for half an hour.
08:07It's the scariest time I've ever had in my life, in a car,
08:11was when I broke down on that lane.
08:14He could only get out of his car by stepping into the speeding traffic.
08:20There was a small gap, so I was able to quickly jump out,
08:25slam the door, run around the back,
08:27before I got taken out by a passing truck.
08:31And it's amazing how fast 50 miles an hour seems
08:33when you're standing really close to the road.
08:38If you can't get out of the passenger side,
08:41the only escape is into the live lane.
08:47Look here on the inside lane,
08:49a car broken down and people on the motorway.
08:56The alternative is to stay inside the car,
08:59and that can be dangerous too.
09:01I'm stuck in the middle of the M6, my car's broken down.
09:05That's what the family in this 999 call decided to do.
09:09OK, whereabouts on the M6?
09:11I'm on the left-hand lane, I've passed Knutsford,
09:15I'm going northbound, got the hazards on.
09:20What else can I do, because I've got a family of five in the car.
09:24OK, don't worry.
09:26And you say there's five people in the car?
09:29Yeah, my... Oh, shit!
09:37Hello? Hello?
09:40This was their car, hit by a lorry at 50 miles an hour.
09:45Amazingly, they all survived.
09:48It's just the most awful situation when you've broken down
09:51and your kids are in the back of the car
09:54and there's nothing you can do to protect your kids.
09:57I certainly believe smart motorways are a scandal
10:00because we've been saying from the outset they are dangerous,
10:04they're not fit for purpose.
10:10So how did we end up with a system that seems so dangerous?
10:16You assume that when you're told something and you're a minister,
10:19it's going to be a good fight.
10:21I've come to meet Mike Penning.
10:23He was the Tory transport minister ten years ago
10:26who agreed to expand the smart motorway network.
10:31The highways agency said to me,
10:33we use the technology that we've got, we can do this safely.
10:36And the evidence from the pilots showed that.
10:39So then we started to roll it out.
10:42But on that first smart motorway, the M42,
10:46safe stopping areas were on average 600 metres apart.
10:52When the smart system was extended,
10:54those laybys were up to 2.5 miles apart.
11:00That's a disgrace, isn't it?
11:02That you signed off on something that then wasn't delivered.
11:05And what was delivered is dangerous.
11:07I agree.
11:08And that's why I'm sitting in front of this camera saying this to you now,
11:11that we need to do something about it now.
11:13And there are people, and I'm sure you'll be interviewing some people,
11:16there are people that have lost their loved ones,
11:18there are people that have been killed and seriously injured on these roads,
11:21and it should never have happened.
11:25Highways England say the plans were approved by ministers.
11:29They say any death on our roads is one too many.
11:33And they're working to gather the facts about smart motorway safety.
11:39The new transport secretary has ordered a review.
11:44When this system was trialled on the M42, they were 600 metres apart.
11:48When the network was rolled out, they're now 2.5 miles apart.
11:52I think they are almost certainly, in some cases, too far apart.
11:56We must be guided by the facts.
11:58And so what I've asked through this stocktake
12:02is to get all of the information together.
12:05Is it the case that if they are 600 metres apart,
12:09that that is the optimum way to build a network?
12:13The police, the AA, even the man who approved this system, Mike Penning,
12:18they all think it's crucial.
12:20What I can tell you, pretty clear steer, I would say,
12:23is I think 2.5 miles is much too far apart.
12:27People need to be passing these every 60 seconds driving at a normal speed.
12:32Problems on a smart motorway can happen at any time.
12:37Is that a broken-down car?
12:39Yeah, it is. I should film that right away.
12:42A car has broken down.
12:44There's no hard shoulder, there's nowhere for it to go.
12:48He's sort of trapped. I'm approaching him.
12:51I'm kind of trapped, can't get into this lane.
12:54To see it for myself, what can happen when a car breaks down on smart motorway?
13:00It's kind of organised chaos because I've got to get past him,
13:03he's just got to hope that nobody crashes into him.
13:0619,000 motorists a year get stuck in a live lane
13:11after breaking down on a smart motorway.
13:14We have a car here now as we're travelling along.
13:17In the hard... Well, there's no hard shoulder, he's in and just abandoned.
13:21He's got to get past him.
13:23He's got to get past him.
13:25We asked the AA to film some of the incidents their patrol saw.
13:30That is a perfect example of the ERAs,
13:34the Emergency Refuge Areas, are too far apart.
13:37Now, for that to be attended,
13:39there will need to be a lane closure put in place
13:42because there is no hard shoulder down there for it.
13:48These ARAs are the ones that are most likely to be affected.
13:53These are some of the incidents they recorded.
13:58Look at this truck in the inside lane.
14:01In front of it, a van has stopped with its hazards on,
14:05so the truck has to pull out sharply.
14:08There's no hard shoulder and the next emergency stop is half a mile away.
14:13And it's already full, a lorry and a breakdown truck.
14:18Here, speed limits and red Xs,
14:21a breakdown in lane three of a smart motorway.
14:25This is a police car in a vehicle
14:28with a poor, petrified driver
14:31stuck in a live lane.
14:35This is a smart motorway.
14:38If that police vehicle hadn't been there,
14:41well, who's going to help it?
14:45Watch this van about to appear on the right,
14:48only now realising a car ahead has stopped dead.
14:55Some near misses are terrifying.
15:02And this van on the left nearly hits a car with hazards on.
15:11I just want to know from you, to tell our viewers,
15:14if tomorrow morning they break down in a smart motorway, what should they do?
15:18The advice is very clear. Stay in your car and wait for rescue.
15:23Unless you are on the near side lane and can get over the barrier.
15:27A lot of these accidents are happening after people have departed from their vehicle.
15:32And are you comfortable with that as advice from the transport minister
15:36that you would say, stay in your car and hope you don't get hit?
15:39It's not my advice, it's the advice from both the police
15:42and the highways agency and others.
15:45But getting out of the car on a busy motorway is not the thing to do.
15:49Staying in is not great either, is it?
15:51The simple answer is that you are best to stay put.
15:55That is the technical advice, the guidance that is given.
15:59What I want to do is make sure you don't end up having to stay there any longer than you need to.
16:04And that is what we're going to get to with the outcome of this review.
16:16You do realise you can't stop here, can you?
16:19You're not allowed, are you?
16:21The police have to deal with smart motorways every day.
16:25On the M1, this driver is blocking an emergency refuge.
16:29He's stopped for a rest.
16:32Your flip-flops are down here.
16:36There is a much more fundamental problem for the police.
16:40No hard shoulder means they struggle to get through to incidents.
16:45The biggest issue we have in serious incidents
16:48is the physically getting there first.
16:50You've got to try and cut through four lanes of traffic
16:53where there's nowhere for them to move.
16:58Some traffic cops are posting online footage
17:01and issuing their own smart motorway safety advice.
17:07Please, if at all possible, do not stop if you have a flat tyre.
17:11Just keep rolling and get to the emergency refuge area.
17:15And that is what this driver in the inside lane appears to be doing,
17:19getting to safety without a wheel.
17:25This footage is from a traffic officer's car in West Yorkshire.
17:29He's attending a breakdown in a live lane.
17:32It's clearly dangerous, so he gets out.
17:35But look at what happens.
17:38They've got to stop, they've got to rethink,
17:41and they've got to look at the evidence that smart motorways
17:45are not the motorway system that was promised way back,
17:49and we've got to do something different.
17:55Some smart motorways are even more dangerous
17:58because the hard shoulder can be switched on and off.
18:02So sometimes the inside lane is a safe place to stop,
18:06sometimes it's not.
18:09They're called dynamic hard shoulders.
18:13There's quite often confusion about stretches of motorway
18:16when there's a so-called dynamic hard shoulder,
18:19that you can use the hard shoulder when it indicates that you can.
18:23So normally when it's congested, but when it's not congested,
18:26you shouldn't use it.
18:28Highways England has already said
18:30they won't create more dynamic sections,
18:33but the transport secretary told Panorama he'd go further.
18:37What about dynamic hard shoulders?
18:39I mean, that seems from the outside looking in as kind of madness.
18:42I'm very unhappy about there being so many different types of motorway.
18:46I don't think we should continue with dynamic motorways
18:50and all-lane running and smart motorways.
18:53It's just too confusing.
18:55Are you suggesting that that might go with part of your review?
18:58Yeah, well, I mean...
18:59Because tomorrow people are on that dynamic motorway, aren't they?
19:02To be clear, yes, that's exactly what I'm suggesting.
19:05We absolutely have to have these,
19:07as safe or safer than regular motorways,
19:09or we shouldn't have them at all.
19:13That decision to abandon dynamic sections
19:16has come too late for Meera Naran.
19:19Her son died on a dynamic stretch of the M6.
19:24Dev was probably the most incredible person I'll ever know.
19:32He excelled at school, he loved his sports,
19:36but he also really enjoyed studying and learning about new things,
19:40the world, always very inquisitive.
19:45This is the part of the M6 where the accident happened.
19:49It's elevated, so there's nowhere to go.
19:52This is the inside lane now, and all you have next to you is a wall.
19:57So if you stop here, you are in trouble straightaway.
20:04At the time, Dev's brother Neil was critically ill
20:08in Birmingham Children's Hospital.
20:10Dev had been to see him and was on his way home with his grandad.
20:15On that dangerous section of the M6, their car stopped on the inside lane.
20:20The motorway at the time was being used as a smarter motorway,
20:24so you had four lanes of live traffic and no hard shoulder.
20:29The lorry driver who hit the car has agreed to talk for the first time.
20:34He doesn't want to be identified.
20:36I was alerted to the fact that there were several people
20:41I was alerted to the fact that there was something wrong
20:45by the abruptness of the lorry in front of me going into lane two,
20:48and the car was just sort of sat in front of me and it sort of zoomed up into me,
20:52and I believe if I'd have had another second,
20:55I wouldn't have had that impact that done all the damage.
20:58The car had only been stopped for 45 seconds.
21:03Dev was killed and his grandad survived.
21:07A serious crash on the M6 closed the motorway for several hours overnight.
21:11It happened just before ten o'clock.
21:14So I walked back to the car and I wish I hadn't
21:18because there was a young boy in the back and it was just terrible to see.
21:26I got the phone call to say something bad has happened
21:30and I just knew it was the worst.
21:34I knew it was the worst possible scenario, I guess.
21:38They brought Dev back to the Birmingham Children's Hospital as well.
21:43So I had both my boys, one fighting for his life still,
21:49and Dev just there.
21:54And I just kept saying, Dev, you can't leave me.
22:00You can't leave me alone. I can't do this without you.
22:05It wasn't right.
22:08I have two sons, one really sick and the healthy one left me.
22:22The reason the accident happened was because there was no hard shoulder on that motorway.
22:27Had there been a hard shoulder on that motorway, the car would have been sat on the hard shoulder.
22:33We would have just driven past and gone along every way.
22:36What do you think about the lorry driver that hit the car?
22:39I'm devastated that all of us have been put in this situation.
22:44Nobody woke up that morning intending for this to happen.
22:50He has to live with this for the rest of his life.
22:56That must be really hard for him as well.
23:03There's another serious problem with smart motorways.
23:07The radar technology that's supposed to keep us alive by detecting stopped vehicles
23:13has only been installed on two sections of the M25.
23:18Everywhere else, stranded motorists have to hope they've been spotted or raised the alarm themselves.
23:25The vast majority of smart motorways don't have this stopped vehicle detection.
23:30And in those cases, we found from Highways England's own report
23:34that on average it took 17 minutes, one-seven, to spot the vehicle.
23:40They're then given three minutes to activate a sign.
23:45And then on average it took 17 minutes for that vehicle to be recovered.
23:50Basically, you're a sitting duck for more than half an hour.
23:59And some of the key technology seems to be unreliable.
24:03We put in a freedom of information request for one stretch of the M25.
24:09It revealed one warning sign was out of action for 336 days.
24:16There was also a shocking rise in near misses.
24:19What they've told us is in the five years before the hard shoulder was taken away,
24:24there were 72 near misses.
24:26In the five years after it became a smart motorway, there were 1,485 near misses.
24:34That's a 20-fold rise.
24:38We were told that the technology behind smart motorways would be so advanced
24:44it would detect obstructions, it would detect problems on the motorway instantaneously.
24:50We know that that technology is not there.
24:54There's only radar on the M25. That's right, isn't it, Minister?
24:58Yeah, I think there are a whole series of things that need to happen.
25:01There's no radar that is on the rest of the system. It's not very smart.
25:04So there's radar coming in, but I think it's too slow.
25:0734 minutes it takes to get to you on average if you're sat on the motorway.
25:10So radar helps. I'm sorry to interrupt, Minister, but radar is not anywhere apart from the M25.
25:15Most of our viewers will drive on motorways where they think there's radar,
25:18they'll think there's technology, and there isn't.
25:20If we're going to have smart motorways, then we have to have smart motorways which are safe.
25:25And in my view, they need to be safer than the conventional motorway,
25:30which, by the way, doesn't have in large part any of this technology at all.
25:33So that's where we've got to get to.
25:35And I would not have launched this stocktake if I wasn't uncomfortable about what was happening and I want to fix it.
25:48Panorama understands that radar will now be installed on all smart motorways within three years.
25:56And a number of new lay-bys will be added.
26:01But some say that's not enough.
26:06We have now a highways officer. He's shut the road.
26:10We've been given a report by an all-party group of MPs.
26:17Their conclusion is pretty shocking.
26:19They say there should be no further roll-out of smart motorways
26:26until more research is being carried out and the places themselves are just fundamentally safer.
26:35The former minister who originally approved smart motorways
26:39has worked on the report with the Campaign for Safer Roadside Rescue and Recovery.
26:46He says smart motorways are dangerous without lay-bys every 800 metres.
26:53They are endangering people's lives. I think that's the right thing to say.
26:57It's not scaremongering. They are endangering people's lives by not doing what they said on the tin
27:02and having smart motorways because they're not smart.
27:09Highways England say smart motorways are as safe as conventional motorways.
27:15But the transport secretary has told us the latest figures suggest 38 people have been killed in the last five years.
27:23Far more deaths than was previously known.
27:26Let's recognise that roads are never going to be completely safe.
27:31One and a half thousand people die a year on our roads in total.
27:36About 38 people have lost their lives on smart motorways since 2015.
27:41But I want them to be the safest possible environment
27:44and I'm convinced that there is more to be done to get there.
27:50As things stand, another 300 miles of smart motorway will open in the next five years.
27:57I'm afraid the time will come when there will be an absolutely catastrophic case.
28:03We've already had enough deaths on these motorways and we know that they're avoidable.
28:08There's a fatal flaw in the system that needs to be looked at and those smart motorways need to be stopped
28:13and we need to stop calling it a smart motorway in the first place.
28:20Smart motorways looked like a clever idea.
28:24But right now there's concern they're not safe enough.
28:28They're the motorways where a breakdown can kill you.
28:31Powerful drama on this Holocaust Memorial Day
28:34as BBC Two tells a true story of survival and hope for the Windermere children.
28:39We'll hear on BBC One investigating a suspicious death from 20 years ago
28:44in a new Silent Witness next.