If you are the owner of a classic or vintage car then you may be interested to read that, apparently, a number of owners of classic cars are deliberately avoiding using smart motorways presumably because they feel that they are more dangerous in the event of breaking down in comparison to a normal motorway.
You will no doubt be aware of the difference between the two types of motorway. If you break down on a normal motorway then ideally you would have been able to pull over onto the hard shoulder that is rarely used for moving traffic until the likes of the AA are able to get to you to either repair your car or transport it to a garage. In the meantime, other moving traffic continues to use lanes 1, 2 and 3.
With a smart motorway system, the hard shoulder is often opened up to moving traffic at very busy times such as rush hours so vehicles not only drive in lanes 1 to 3 but also the hard shoulder for a period of time. There are cameras strategically placed along the stretch of smart motorway so that someone is able to monitor the traffic along that stretch. If you break down in your car on a smart motorway then you ideally need to get the vehicle to the hard shoulder and wait until a recovery vehicle arrives. The fact that your car is stationery on the hard shoulder should be picked up by the cameras and the hard shoulder should be “blocked off” to other vehicles that should revert to just using lanes 1.2 and 3. Whilst it is to be hoped that a classic car does not have a mechanical problem on the motorway resulting in the vehicle having to pull over and stop on the hard shoulder, in theory, an older car could be more likely to break down than a modern car. None smart motorways provide classic car enthusiasts with greater peace of mind of being able to remain safer than on a smart motorway should they break down.
