What are smart motorways and how do we use them?

Smart motorways have been a hot topic of conversation for a while now. Some people love them, others don’t – but the fact remains they are here to stay and we’re seeing more smart motorways than ever before. So what is a smart motorway?

A smart motorway uses traffic management methods to both increase road capacity and reduce traffic congestion. Highways England developed smart motorways as a way of managing traffic with minimal environmental impact.

There are three types of smart motorway; All lane running, dynamic hard shoulder and controlled motorway schemes. Concerns were raised initially by the lack of hard shoulder when it comes to smart motorways, but Highways England has reported that journey reliability has been improved by 22% and personal injury accidents have been reduced than more by half thanks to smart motorways.

The most important thing when travelling on a smart motorway is to pay attention to signage. The motorway will display different speed limits/closed lanes depending on the need for traffic management – so pay attention!

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