A woman who left Nottinghamshire for her home country of Romania after losing her brother in an M1 smart motorway crash says that the "painful memories" mean she can't return. Alexandru Murgeanu, 22, and Jason Mercer, 44, had been swapping insurance details following a minor collision on the M1 in 2019 when they were struck by a lorry.
It happened on a section of road where the hard shoulder was used for traffic - a so-called smart motorway. Smart motorways were brought in to manage traffic in a way that minimises environmental impact, cost and time by avoiding the need to build extra lanes.
But dozens of people have been killed on smart motorways since they were rolled out and the Government said in January that new developments were being paused. Speaking during the Conservative Party leadership campaign, Liz Truss said that where they are not working, she would scrap smart motorways.
