Drivers left as “sitting ducks” after smart motorway safety systems stop working in Derbyshire during rush hour

Safety systems across large parts of Derbyshire and England’s smart motorway network stopped working for two hours during rush hour on Wednesday, February 22.

National Highways confirmed that the Dynac system, which controls stopped vehicle detection, signs and signals, stopped working at around 8.30am and was not back online until around 10.30am. It said it was now investigating the cause of the outage.

The fault affected the whole of England’s smart motorway network except in the East and South East. Motoring groups called the unplanned outage “deeply concerning” and warned it had put motorists’ lives at risk.

Smart motorways rely on the Dynac system to monitor roads for problems and adjust speed limits and lane closures in response to issues such as broken-down vehicles. Without the stopped vehicle detection radar system, National Highways had to rely on CCTV and increase road patrols to monitor traffic across the network. It said there were no major incidents or serious congestion during the incident.

National Highways’ operational control director, Andrew Page-Dove, said: “We are urgently investigating an unplanned outage of our traffic management system. Engineers worked hard to get the system back online as soon as possible and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.

“We have well-rehearsed procedures to deal with issues which arise. We rapidly took steps to help ensure the safety of road users such as increased patrols and CCTV monitoring.”

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AA president Edmund King suggested it was “time to go back to the drawing board” with smart motorways. He commented: “So-called smart motorways cease to be smart when the technology fails, and drivers in dangerous live-lane situations are left as sitting ducks.

“Road users can only have confidence in the systems if the technology works. That’s clearly not the case with the outage. Some 38% of breakdowns on ‘smart’ motorways occur in live lanes as often there is nowhere to go and these situations, with or without technology, are terrifying.”