The smart motorways computer system shut down across the UK earlier this year, causing a “catastrophic failure” that caused a “terrifying” six-car pileup, a National Highways whistleblower has said.
The whistleblower told how the system crashed throughout the country on January 19, leaving workers without control over the 44 stretches across 14 motorways.
Staff lost CCTV functionality, were unable to close lanes to traffic, set speed limits, control electric signs, or use radar technology that detects crashed vehicles for three hours, between 5.25pm and 8.30pm.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, the whistleblower blamed the three-hour mass outage for causing a six-car pileup on the day that resulted in multiple injuries.
The revelation has emboldened calls from road campaigners to have the stretches excised from the motorway and plans abandoned.
The anonymous National Highways worker told the Telegraph the mass failure caused the pileup on the M6 southbound on January 19.
A car was left a “sitting duck” after it broke down on the inside lane and was unable to reach an emergency refuge area on the “all lane running” stretch before it was hit multiple times between junctions 3a and 3 near Coventry.
The organisation confirmed in a statement that multiple people sustained “minor injuries” during an “unplanned outage”.
The whistleblower said it was “pure luck” that nobody died during the outage, as no one was watching over motorists.
They said: “We had no stopped vehicle detection systems, no CCTV and no control of signals and signs.
“The fact no one was killed is pure luck. Thankfully, God was watching over them, because we certainly weren’t.”
Reacting to the news, Edmund King, the president of AA, said it showed the “smart motorway experiment” had “failed again”.
A spokesman for National Highways said the organisation has “well-rehearsed procedures” to deal with smart motorway outages.
They said: “As with any technology, there are occasional planned and unplanned outages and so we have well-rehearsed procedures to deal with issues which arise.
“We have additional measures to limit any impact on drivers or traffic flow, including increased patrolling by our traffic officers and active monitoring of CCTV.”
