New research from The AA reveals a sharp rise in driver anxiety when using smart motorways, with concern levels doubling over the past 12 months.
A survey of 12,705 drivers found that 46% now feel nervous or anxious on smart motorways with no hard shoulder, compared with 23% a year ago. These layouts rely on emergency refuge areas spaced at roughly three-quarters of a mile apart.
Motorways where the hard shoulder is only opened as a running lane during busy periods also saw a marked increase in unease, rising from 30% to 47% in the same period.
By contrast, confidence remains highest on conventional motorways that retain a continuous hard shoulder. While anxiety levels on these roads are still low, they have risen slightly, suggesting that broader concerns about motorway safety may be growing across the network.
Taken together, the findings highlight a widening confidence gap between traditional motorway layouts and smart motorways. Concerns centre on breakdown safety, access to refuge areas and the effectiveness of incident detection.
Drivers responding to the survey described feeling “terrified” and said smart motorways “fill me with fear”, while others pointed to the lack of a safe place to stop if something goes wrong.
Smart motorways were first trialled 20 years ago on the M42, initially using dynamic hard shoulders. The programme expanded between 2010 and 2023, eventually covering around 17% of the motorway network before being cancelled.
There are several motorway types in use, ranging from conventional motorways with a permanent hard shoulder to all-lanes-running designs with no hard shoulder at all. Controlled motorways retain a hard shoulder but use overhead gantries to manage speeds.
Commenting on the findings, Edmund King, president of The AA, said: “These safety reports are vital in understanding how the smart motorways experiment has fared. By continuously delaying their release, it is feared that the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. Regardless of what these documents say, they need to be published immediately.” The AA continues to call for a return to controlled motorways with a permanent hard shoulder.
The organisation has raised concerns about roads without a permanent hard shoulder, pointing to analysis showing that drivers who break down on these routes are around three times more likely to be killed or seriously injured. Between 2010 and 2024, at least 79 people were killed on smart motorways.
The AA says the latest results underline the need for clearer, more transparent safety monitoring. While a safety stocktake was published in 2023/24 and the smart motorway programme has since been scrapped, drivers remain unclear about how safety is now being independently reviewed.
The organisation is also calling for the urgent publication of long-delayed reports examining the safety and economic performance of individual smart motorway schemes.
