“Their executives receive a high salary after these deaths and continue to remove the hard shoulder without installing necessary safety measures. ”
In March, Mr Shapps unveiled an 18-point “action plan” that would make smart motorways safer, including a bid by Highways England, a government company, the SVD system. installed on all smart highways within three years.
Last year, Jim O’Sullivan, the outgoing chief of Highways England, admitted that lives were lost due to delays in setting up the SVD system.
A parliamentary question established that only 23.86 miles of smart highway was covered by SVD in March. The Department for Transport’s response said a total of 36.78 miles would be in operation by the end of the year.
However, when the Sunday Telegraph contacted Highways England to find out exactly what had been done so far the company admitted that although SVD was putting it into projects across the network it was not. only 23.86 miles of radar technology in operation.
The technology is intended to support the wide range of CCTV cameras and Midas (Motorway Incident Detection and Automatic Signaling), technology.
Sarah Champion, the Labor MP who asked the question, said she was “deeply concerned” that the spread of SVD had been “glacial”.
She said: “How many more deaths will it take before the Government takes over its highway responsibility?
A Highways England spokesman said: “Government evidence has found that smart highways are in most ways as safe as, or safer than, conventional roads. We have welcomed the adoption of stock as an opportunity to make our motorways even safer and are committed to halting vehicle detection by March 2023 as outlined in the action plan. ”
He said the stockholding “accepts that SVD is not necessary to achieve the safety goal of making smart motorways safer or more secure than the road they are replacing.”
The Department for Transport declined to comment.
SVD has been installed on two sections of the M25 and is expected to go live on the M3.