A woman who lost her husband in a crash on a smart motorway said that "thousands are being endangered" on the controversial roads while the government has paused any further developments. Claire Mercer, whose husband Jason was killed on a stretch of the M1 with no hard shoulder in 2019, has accused Rishi Sunak of breaking his promise to put an end to smart motorways.
It comes as the newly-appointed Transport Secretary Mark Harper was confronted over the topic in a an interview on LBC. Asked if he is a 'fan of smart motorways', he added: "You'll know my predecessor-but-one [Grant Shapps] paused rolling out any new smart motorways until the department could gather evidence over a significant period of time about their operation, about their safety record - and that position remains the case.'"
He added: "Evidence will be gathered and then we will be able to make decisions in due course about whether or not we roll out any more of these motorways. But we are not rolling out any more at the moment. We are collecting evidence from these that already exist. And I think that is a sensible position."
