Professional Recovery 354

RECOVERYINSIDER
by Derek Firminger
The recovery industry
have made significant
improvements within its
working environment
where smart motorways are
concerned
SMART
MOTORWAY
IMPROVEMEN
It’s not very often I comment on Fred Henderson the Breakdown Doctor’s comments, even when he tries to entice
me into commenting on his lack of support for increased industry safety and compliance and his negative views on the
industry implementing and adopting its own official voluntary recovery licence.
Let’s break that mould and
go to his edit from the last
magazine 353, ‘Make Smart
Motorways Safe – Just do it!’
Says Fred, well his timing couldn’t
have been better, I have a strong
feeling he has been reading
the Transport Committee oral
evidence sessions on the roll-out
of smart motorways last year,
especially the session from
May 19 where Edmund King AA
President, and Nick Lyes Head
of Roads Policy RAC, both gave
evidence.
I do find that strange, the AA
and RAC are the ones regularly
called to give evidence, just because of
their household names, as most breakdown
incidents on any motorway, conventional,
all-lanes running, dynamic, whatever are
attended by the independent recovery
network.
All motorway breakdown incidents are
managed by
Government
agency led
contracts or local
police forces or
their managing
agents, including
the majority
for breakdown
provider work,
including the
RAC and AA.
This work is then
passed to the
independent
network and is
rarely, if ever,
dealt with by either the AA or the RAC.
Surely, they both have a duty to explain
to the Chair of the Transport Committee
how little their involvement is, and the fact
remains that the experience that should
be relied upon, is that of the independent
operator.
Anyway, off my soapbox and back to
Fred’s last edit, as only 10 days after his
comments the Transport Committee
produced their latest and third report –
‘Rollout and Safety of Smart Motorways’,
where Edmund King’s evidence is
remarkably similar to Fred’s. He thinks the
same, citing that most incidents on the M1
have happened at night, Fred also suggests
that a dynamic hard shoulder could be
turned into an extra lane between 7am to
7pm and then reverted to a conventional
hard shoulder after 7pm.
I know for sure this dynamic use of the
hard shoulder during set day and night
times has been discussed previously. It
was discussed back in those early days of
Highways England just after they dropped
the name Highways Agency, I know firsthand
as I was at a number of working group
meetings when this was suggested. Fred
your quite right, first off it does sound
quite logical but when you compare it to
other schemes that have day to night-time
8 PROFESSIONAL RECOVERY MAGAZINE
8, 9, 10, 11 DF.indd 1 18/01/2022 09:01