Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Smart Motorway - near death experience!

I suspect that per mile of road then motorway's are "more dangerous" (but as you say their loading is very much higher). Net net you are more likely to see an accident on a mile of motorway than on a mile of rural road...

Agree and on the 'All Lanes Running' 4 lane Smart Motorways the extra lane means lane discipline is even worse.

In addition Lorries can legally go ito the 3rd lane of 4 lane Smart Motorways so instead of 2 out of 3 lanes being blocked with Lorries doing the 1mph slow overtake, we now have 3 out of 4 lanes blocked by Lorries doing the 1 mph slow overtake. I dont think the Government had thought that one through.

None of this affects me in the Morgan though. Ive only been on the motorway in it once. To me Motorways are meant for getting from A to B and not for pleasure and I have no intention of going on a Smart Motorway in my Morgan.

As I said, you can use statistics to prove anything.

From 2016 onwards, figures on the severity of injury have been affected by a large number of police forces changing their reporting systems. In previous years, serious injuries may have been classified as slight injuries which impacts the comparability of these figures over time.

Motorway casualties are relatively small in number compared to urban or rural roads:

https://maps.dft.gov.uk/road-casualties/index.html

- but I'm certainly not in favour of "smart" roads of any kind at the moment!

What about this though? It's not just about the chances of being in an accident. We need to take into account the chances of surviving an accident on a particular type of road.
What percentage of deaths out of the total accidents on that road as against what percentage of the total accidents on a roads, for instance.
It seems to me that one is at a higher risk of mortal injury on a road where the speed is high and no place to get off it...?
Nick

But generally speaking on motorways, nobody comes in the opposite direction.

Generally speaking.

The complete datasets are here and there is a portal on which you can filter and drill down by category:

https://maps.dft.gov.uk/road-casualties/index.html

And if you don't see the data you're looking for, you can download anything you like from here:

https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk

You can get stats by road type, injury type, location, police force, date, road class, speed limit, junction type, prevailing weather, lighting conditions, just about anything you can think of. Then you can spruce up your Excel pivot table skills and come up with any analysis you like.

I know it's popular to slag off civil service and bureaucracy, but it has to be said their provision of this data to the public is flippin' awesome.

Bottom line: you are much less likely to have an accident on a motorway than elsewhere, and you are less likely to die if you do have one. Hardly surprising as it's junctions that are the locus of most accidents.

I've only seen this illuminated sign once on a gantry...........

*20* *On-coming vehicle*

And we never saw it...........

While I understand the huge importance of accurate information, stats and graphs, I tend to be more into real world experience, travelling the length of England on the motorway network is for me a real drudge, and enough to put me off long distance motoring adventures in Europe, let alone visiting relatives in the South, and even more so as I age..

The country is just too over populated for the motorway infrastructure it has, those who looked at the cost of "upgrading" parts of the network and came up with smart motorways as the most "affordable" option no doubt carefully stuDIED reams of data relative to the projected accident rate, just as did those who planned battles..? I suspect there would inevitably be discussions on acceptable losses, of course each of us thinks we are so very precious these days, and it is just too much to for us to swallow that we might just be considered as some sort of statistic at ANY time let alone an acceptable loss ... Hmm..?

Lots of English accents picked up on inhabitants even in the more remote parts of Scotland despite the weather.... I wonder why..

Impressive stuff Tim.
Is there a filter that can discriminate your chances of dying if you are standing in the slow lane of a smart motorway near your broken vehicle (as you can't clime over the barrier because of the shear drop, or you are still in the car as you are disabled etc.etc.)

I have absolutely no chance of working it out but you are so much better at that sort of thing, have a go, I'd love to know.


Nick