Newslink March 2021

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Keeping the highways clear
I recently had the opportunity to listen to
an interview with Philip Price, a
Highways England Traffic Officer. Their
role in road safety seems to me to be
much maligned and misunderstood, so
hearing the interview gave me an
opportunity to jot down some notes as to
how they help drivers.
Their primary function, Philip said,
was to assist drivers who get into
difficulties and to keep traffic flowing.
There are 246,000 miles of paved
road in Great Britain, 32,000 miles of
which are high speed and carry onethird
of all traffic by mileage. There are
around 1,850 incidents each day, to be
covered by 200 traffic officers, and they
are usually the first to arrive at an
incident on a motorway or A-road.
Surprisingly, in these days of car
technology, warning lights, bleeps and
buzzes, 30 per cent of the incidents they
are called to check out are people
running out of petrol.
Conversely, many people who have
stopped do not need any help at all,
having called their own motoring
organisations for assistance.
Traffic officers carry a lot of equipment.
They can clean up a maximum of 50
litres of spillage – oil or fuel – which is
sufficient for most situations apart from
some HGVs. They use ground up moss
(sphagnum) as sponges and wipes and
carry six bags of it. Also in their armoury
are twenty cones, nine lights, six 6 x 10
arrows (the white ones on the blue
NEWSLINK n MARCH 2021
Alex Brownlee writes: The following was supplied
by Janet Stewart, a member of the MSA GB Greater
London committee and our Member of the Year
background) a “No entry” sign, incident
slow sign, two straps, First Aid kit and a
defibrillator.
Whenever possible, they will
encourage the driver of a broken-down
vehicle to get it to a place of safety.
Apparently, many people panic with the
noise and feel of driving on a flat tyre
and don’t want to move the vehicle.
They are told to go slowly, and the
rubber will stay on. If power has been
lost the vehicle will be towed. However,
traffic officers are equipped with straps,
not a bar, so if the driver is not going to
be able to steer and brake (risking
ramming the towing vehicle) one of the
two-man crew will sit in the vehicle.
Many of the vehicles that break down
needing assistance have been poorly
maintained and the driver is not a
member of a vehicle recovery association.
There are other, more human, reasons
why they need to attend incidents.
Suicides from motorway bridges are not
uncommon and in many areas, barriers
on bridges are being raised to try to
prevent this.
It was also surprising to hear that a
number of people are ‘booted’ out of a
car on a motorway... one hopes the
vehicle had stopped! People also wait for
taxis on motorways if the place they
want to be picked up from is close to the
motorway but difficult to find or get to.
There are, of course, many incidents
caused by lack of understanding and/or
knowledge and what Mr Price called ‘last
minute.com’, ie, leaving it too late for the
exit and doing the ‘four-lane sweep’
across the lanes to get to the desired slip
road. One in eight casualties is the result
of tailgating, he said.
The reasons people give for stopping
on the hard shoulder are many and
varied – and often not legal. The traffic
officers will often find HGV drivers
parked up on the hard shoulder when
they cannot reach somewhere more
suitable for a TACO break. There are
people who stop to programme the
sat-nav, people stopping for a pee, to
take photos of a nice view and even
those who just decide to stop for the
night. The Traffic Officer can strongly
advise these people to move on but has
no legal power.
Smart motorways seem to be the
burning issue of the day in road
transport. Mr Price stressed that there
are not too many problems with all-lane
running but there are problems with
dynamic hard shoulders. It has only
recently become possible to take learners
on motorways and, it seems, many
people do not know how to use smart
motorways safely.
All-lane running is most probably here
to stay with increased technology,
up-grading from MIDAS (motorway
incident detection automatic signalling).
The point was strongly made that we
have been coping very well for years with
high-speed A roads with no hard
shoulder, few lay-bys and potentially
pedestrians and cyclists.
He also stressed how keen his team
was to get its messages across. There
are seven Regional Operations Centres
across the country and group visits can
be arranged from interested parties.
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