Parts of a radar system on the M25 designed to detect stopped cars has been out of action since Tuesday, it emerged yesterday, raising fresh concerns about the risks posed by smart motorways.
Stopped Vehicle Detection (SVD) radar posts should flag a stationary car within 20 seconds, but nine out of 51 of the sites on the M25 are said to currently be out of action.
According to the Daily Mail, radar posts between junctions 23 and 27, covering 18 miles of London’s orbital motorway, stopped working on Tuesday. It means there are now several blind spots affecting both carriageways, with one in six of the posts reportedly unable to detect stopped cars.
National Highways said that extra traffic police would patrol the roads “for the next few days”.
SVD is designed to alert National Highways to vehicles marooned in traffic, a situation that often occurs on “all-lane running” smart motorways because they have no hard shoulder.
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According to internal emails obtained by the Daily Mail, a National Highways boss emailed all staff working at the South Mimms control room in Hertfordshire on Tuesday afternoon warning that SVD was out of action on the M25 in Hertfordshire and Essex.
“We are currently experiencing some faults with SVD radar heads on the M25, J23 [for A1(M)] to J27 [for M11] across a few sites,” he said.
The official urged the control room to help by increasing “virtual patrolling” of the roads through CCTV, adding: “I am authorising the use of overtime on every single shift.” The National Highways employee sent a further email yesterday, ordering staff to report every SVD failure.
He said: “I have seen and have had over the last few days many complaints about SVD, but it would seem many of these are not being reported.”
Staff reportedly said they did not have time to log every incident as they are occurring too frequently, and nothing improves when they do.
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Claire Mercer, 45, who started the campaign group Smart Motorways Kill after her husband Jason was died on a stretch of the M1, said: “When the tech is failing so widely, it massively increases the chances of a cataclysmic accident.”
Duncan Smith, National Highways director of operations, said: “The vast majority of SVD units, signs and signals and CCTV remain in operation, and we have deployed extra traffic officer patrols. We are working to repair the faulty units as a priority.”
It comes after a 68-year-old woman was killed and two others seriously injured earlier this month when a van ploughed into their broken-down car on a smart motorway section of the M4.
According to a source quoted by the Daily Mail, SVD had not been working there for five days prior to Pulvinder Dhillon’s death. The source claimed police had picked up that the vehicle was stranded but when National Highways turned its cameras around to find it, they instead witnessed the crash.
Another source, who works in the South Mimms control room, said: “[Dhillon’s car] was sitting there for around five to ten minutes and cars were coming up at speed and almost hitting it, and all of a sudden a van hits it.”
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Martin Fellows, National Highways’ regional director, said: “This was a tragic incident and our thoughts are with everyone affected at this difficult time.”
Dhillon’s Nissan had stalled in the outside lane of the motorway near Reading, Berkshire. Shortly afterwards a white van smashed into it.
