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April 7, 2019 - David Icke
01:08:48
NBE Talks To Paul Icke About The Dangers of Smart Motorways - "Murder By Design"
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I'm a non-binary elephant.
Podcast. Hello and welcome to the Non-binary Elephant Podcast.
I'm Jamie Icke. I'm Gareth Ike, Jamie's big brother, and continuing the sort of family theme we've got going on, we're actually joined by our uncle today.
Yeah, Uncle Paul's joining us.
Paul is a bus and coach engineer, over 45 years of experience working on the UK motorways, and he's coming in today to talk to us about a new thing you may or may not have heard of, called smart motorways, and the dangers of those, and how institutionally the dangers of people are aware of them, they just don't care. So, Paul, welcome to the podcast.
I'm here today... In the light of yet another fatality on a UK motorway.
A fatality that was totally avoidable had we not brought in total insanity in the shape of new motorway design.
We're talking what I term murder by design because it would be obvious to anyone from the start these motorways are going to be deadly.
What are we talking about?
We're talking about the smart motorway.
The dumb motorway. The biggest contradiction in terms I have ever come across on 61 years on this planet.
It's like putting politician and intelligent in the same sentence.
It just doesn't happen, does it?
Smart is such a buzzword, isn't it, now?
Oh, smart's everything. But generally, everything that's got a label smart on it is dumb.
Yeah, it generally isn't. So what have we got with the smart motorway?
We've got something that's been designed, implemented, and managed by Dumb and Dumber.
There's no getting away from it.
It's Dumb and Dumber, or it's their twin brother.
Going under the guise of Highways England.
Brilliant, isn't it? Highways England.
Killing people totally unnecessarily.
So for those of you that are not familiar with smart motorways, we need to really go back quite a long way to when these first started.
They were first thought about in 2002 under the guise of managed motorways.
And that was sort of implemented under the Labour government of Tony Blair with Alistair Darling at that time as the Transport Secretary.
But it took quite a while for it to take off and it was agreed that there'd be a test section of the M42 to prove the concept.
That's in the Midlands of England, for anyone listening that's not familiar with the M42. It's always full of traffic?
Always full of traffic, yeah. Always busy, always busy, admittedly always busy.
So they decided that we're going to go ahead and we're going to try this.
And it took till 2006 before they started what was known as hard shoulder running.
Now, the hard shoulder is what is essentially the emergency lane.
On all UK motorways, from their start in the very late 50s, early 60s, we had three running lanes, we had an emergency lane.
So if your car breaks down, you sit in that lane.
If you've got a problem with your vehicle, you've only got to drift across the lanes.
You can drift diagonally across the lanes, you're on the hard shoulder.
You're in relative safety.
But the idea of the smart motorway, or as they called it, controlled motorways, was that they would open up the hard shoulder, the emergency lane, on a part-time basis to ease traffic flow.
In other words, increased capacity on the cheap.
Yeah, but if you've broken down, people are flying seven miles out.
But the question you should immediately ask, I mean, if one imagines the meeting they must have had, You know, we've come up with a great idea how we can increase capacity on the motorways, on the cheap.
Ooh, how's that then? We'll open up the hard shoulder.
Well, wouldn't that be a little bit dangerous?
Did you not think? Well, yeah, it will be, but I mean, that doesn't really matter, does it?
We're not very interested in...
There's a lot of people about, we kill a few, it doesn't really matter, does it?
Plenty more around. This is what must have been the conversation.
Because the question you ask yourself is...
What happens if somebody breaks down and all the lanes are running?
Ah, well, what we'll do, we'll put some lay-bys in every now and again.
You know, I'm thinking about this meeting.
We'll put some lay-bys in every now and again and we'll come up with a really good name for them.
I know! We'll call them emergency refuge areas.
That sounds dramatic, doesn't it?
It does. We're thinking of safety of the motoristic, an emergency refuge area.
And we'll space them out not too far apart because we don't really want this trial to show up the disaster that this is going to become.
How far are they apart? They were originally 800 metres apart, half a mile, right?
So they run the test.
And the hail of success. Well, that was a shock, wasn't it?
That was a real shock, wasn't it?
That was hail of a success.
Because it was always going to be a hail of a success.
Because there's a larger, bigger agenda in the background.
Which is only now just coming to fruition.
Because they've moved the game on from the part-time hard shoulder running, as I'll explain in a minute.
To full-time all-lane running.
And that's being rolled out now at some massive speed.
All over the country these things are going out.
But anyway, so we go back to the test.
They run the test. Part-time hard shoulder running.
Emergency refuge areas every 500, every half a mile, 800 metres.
Because we care about safety of the motor in public.
Don't forget that. Don't forget that because it comes up later.
And after the test has been having a success, they decide they're going to roll these things out all around the country.
And what do they do when they roll them out around the country?
Now, bear in mind, I told you Dumb and Dumber is running this organisation.
They space the emergency refuge area to a mile and a half apart, three times the distance of the test bed, which was a success.
So if your engine blows up, you're not cruising my life.
No, you're not cruising under jars.
No, no. And this is where we've come to now.
So we've moved on.
We've moved on. However, success.
Rolled it out. So now we've got the all-lane-running smart motorway with an emergency refuge area a mile and a half apart.
They have recently...
Because there's just been a little bit of concern about the safety from various quarters.
Strange that, isn't it?
Yeah, I can imagine. There's been a little bit of feedback that these things are dangerous.
So they've decided now they're going to put them a little bit closer together where they can.
So some might be 800 metres apart, some a mile apart, some a mile and a quarter apart.
There's some of them a mile and a half apart.
So there's no consistency as a driver?
There's no consistency of them.
Now, I've always complained about this from the start.
I've spent 45 years working the motorways dealing with broken down coaches.
So I've been around a bit and I've seen what can happen on the motorway.
And it was obvious, absolutely obvious, these were death traps.
Yeah. But it was brought home when they opened the section between junction 16 and the M6-M1 split at junction 19.
Because I'm up and down that section all the time.
Prior to this, I'd only had temporary, occasional use of the so-called smart motorways.
But the bit between 16 and 19, I'm up and down daily.
It had only opened a matter of days Before I'm travelling up the M1, coming back from a job, so I'm not in any great hurry.
I'm in lane one, formerly the hard shoulder, behind the lorry.
Reasonable distance behind the lorry, trundling along.
The lorry's brake lights come on.
I'm gaining on him rapidly.
And I mean rapidly.
So that tells me immediately, this chap is doing any emergency stuff.
He's anchoring up.
So I've got two choices.
I anchor up or we glance in the mirror.
Lane two's clear.
There's a van just come past me.
So I pull out into lane two.
As the van is halfway past the lorry, the lorry swerves into lane two.
The van driver, totally on the ball.
Pulls up, stops.
I'm behind the van, but don't forget by this time, so I've moved to lane two.
I stop. So momentarily, we've got an Arctic across two lanes, a van stopped, me stopped.
Well, we're waiting for the bank.
We're waiting for something to hit us.
Because we've all three had to come to an immediate, virtually immediate stop.
We wait, the van driver waits, the lorry pulls away, the van pulls away, I pull away.
Nobody hit us.
But in lane one, fortunately, very fortunately, in lane one is a silver grey metallic car broken down with no lights on.
The weather, I failed to tell you, was that rain, that fine rain that we get that is like a thick fog.
Yep. You've all seen it.
It's raining. It's not foggy.
It's raining, but this motorway.
The visibility is particular.
Now, this lorry driver had done absolutely nothing wrong.
He's trundling up a motorway.
This is the bit they don't get about blaming the driver for running into the back of a stationary vehicle in a light lane on the motorway.
The motorway is a unique road.
We're travelling in essentially a straight line.
Everybody's going in the same direction.
There's nobody going to turn right in front of you.
So we're all letting in the same direction, aren't we?
So you're looking, you're keeping a safe gap, you're keeping a safe braking gap, and we're all driving wonderfully.
But what's the one single most important safety aid to prevent a collision on the motorway?
It's the vehicle's brake lights.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're both drivers.
Yeah. You're going down the motorway.
Everybody's moving at 70 mile an hour, 50 mile an hour, 60 mile an hour, whatever vehicle they're in.
We're all moving down the motorway in a straight line.
We've all got a gap in front, which is a safe gap to stop in.
Yeah. Providing we see the brake lights of the vehicle in front.
Now, if a vehicle's broken down in the light lane of the carriageway, there's no brake lights.
The other problem is, vehicles suffer electrical failures.
Things go wrong, and they've got no lights.
Suddenly, out of the blue, a vehicle appears.
Now, if that driver had not swerved, he would have hit it.
And the people were still sitting in the car, by the way.
Right, that's ridiculous. So, we're sitting in the car, we're sitting in the car, in very poor visibility, with no lights on.
Had the lorry driver hit it and killed them, They would have most probably jailed him.
Yeah, yeah. But I witnessed it.
He was not at fault. No, no.
We're all going in a straight line and suddenly this thing appears from nowhere.
But that's happened before, isn't it, where people have been jailed for this?
And this has happened many times. This has happened many, many times.
And they just don't get it.
And of course, their get-out-of-jail card, these parasites in authority, their get-out-of-jail card is to blame the Now, you can say that on a normal road, but a motorway is a different scenario.
You're not expecting going up the road to find a stationary vehicle with no lights on in the middle of the carriageway.
No. You're not expecting it.
No, you're not. You're not expecting it.
But that's what the hard shoulder's for, isn't it?
So, it is an unmitigated disaster and we've killed quite a number of people have been killed and seriously injured
because of it.
And as I mentioned before, there was a case where three people were killed in a car and one was seriously injured
because they were struck by another vehicle.
Now, as far as I'm aware, the driver of the vehicle that struck them has been jailed.
But his defence was he thought the hard shoulder was an all-lane running road.
It was a running lane.
Well, again, we've blamed the driver.
But if we take a step back from that, had we never introduced hard shoulder running...
That driver would never have got confused that the high shoulder may be running late.
Because it never has been.
And then of course the other problem we have, that is a really serious problem with them is,
when you get a multi-vehicle collision and the road is blocked,
we've taken out what I term, as I termed at the beginning, the emergency lane.
Yeah, because the ambulances would fly up there.
That essentially is what the hard shoulder is.
We call it the hard shoulder.
It's like calling a vacuum cleaner a hoover.
We call it the hard shoulder.
But essentially, it is the emergency lane.
You have an emergency with your vehicle.
It's cut out. It's caught fire.
The driver's taken ill.
You can immediately go on to the hard shoulder in seconds and a very short travelling distance.
If there's a pileup in the front, a major incident, your emergency vehicles, fire police and ambulance can all access it rapidly by the emergency lane, the hard shoulder.
When you take that away, you've then got four lanes of solid stationary traffic.
And of course, if there's a pileup at the front...
The traffic goes up to it.
And the one behind pulls behind it, pulls behind it, pulls behind it, pulls behind it.
When you hear the sirens and see the blue lights in the background, there's absolutely nothing anyone can do
because they've got nowhere to go.
They can't move because there isn't enough room from the one in front. The ones at the front can't move because they're
up against a pylon.
So people will die waiting for ambulances?
People will die in multi-vehicle collisions on smart motorways because of the delay of the emergency services meeting it.
But these won't be records that are kept.
No, of course not. No one will ever know how many people have suffered With three lanes running or four lanes running and an emergency lane, you've got rapid access of the emergency services.
Now, when that lane is taken away from them, they've got two alternatives.
They've either got to come up the opposite carriageway, so if it's southbound, they've got to come up the northbound.
If it's northbound, they've got to come up the southbound or down the southbound.
And then block that carriageway because their vehicles are going to be parked up against the barrier.
And they've then got to get over the barrier to deal with the casualties.
But they may have equipment in the vehicles.
They can't physically lift over the barriers.
They need the vehicle there.
They may be running stuff from the vehicle.
So the other thing they've got to do is you've got to bring them up the wrong way on the carriageway where the incident has occurred.
But that takes time.
You can't just suddenly get a whole troop of emergency vehicles flying up the heading north on the southbound carriageway of the M1 because you don't know if there's anybody on the other side of the accident still coming down.
So there has to be a massive delay while they make sure there's no one coming and we can get these vehicles up.
Well this is going to result in people dying.
It is. I mean, most people know that in major trauma the first hour is usually the key.
Seconds count, minutes count.
And we've got all this insanity.
And why have we done it?
We've done it because we perceive we need to increase capacity on the motorway because of the amount of vehicles out there.
But we've decided to do...
Spend billions of pounds doing something, but make sure the result at the end of it is a crap job.
And they do that everywhere.
And they've done it here.
I've come up today to here.
I've come up with a section of the motorway that they widen to four lanes with a hard shoulder.
There's a section not in an area.
Four lanes with a hard shoulder.
It took them a long while to build it.
It cost them, obviously, a lot more money.
A lot more money, yeah. But it works.
But it works, and it's safe.
And people just don't...
What these people have not taken into account, which I do as a vehicle engineer, is the amount of things that can go wrong with a vehicle, which render it immobile immediately.
Yep. Now, when this section opened between 16 and 19, we'll go back to that a little bit, because I travel up and down that daily.
When it first opened, I thought, I'm going to check these...
Don't forget the phrase, emergency refuge areas out.
So I pass one at 70 miles an hour.
And I count, because the assumption is, I've just gone past it, my engine's cut out.
Right. Can happen, does happen, to somebody, somewhere, many times a day.
So we've just passed the emergency refuge area, but I'm doing 70, don't forget.
And it's an eternity to reach the next one.
You try it. Next time you go on a smart motorway, go past an emergency refuge area and check the time.
Count. One, two, three.
See how long it takes you to get to the next one when they're a mile and a half apart.
It's an eternity.
Now, you're not going to do that if the engine's just cut out.
No, no. You're not doing 100 metres if the engine's cut out.
So where do you end up?
You suddenly then come to a stop.
Vehicles coming up behind you.
Anything from 56 to 70 miles an hour.
It's those first few seconds, the instant you come to a stop, where the real risk is.
And no amount of technology can reduce that risk.
No. This is where I say smart is anything but smart.
Oh, we've got all this technology.
Technology's smart. Yeah, but people that are working it are dumb.
This is the problem. So it's those first few seconds where you're at risk of being struck.
Once people have seen it and the traffic starts to slow down, because don't forget you've now blocked a lane, so the traffic in lane one is going to start stacking up and going to try to get to lane two, which backs up lane two, which is going to try to get there.
So we end up with the domino effect that eventually, with the vehicle stranded, once it's been acknowledged it's there, The traffic all starts to back up.
Well, as the traffic slows down and backs up, the risk diminishes.
Diminishes drastically. But no amount of technology can protect you in those first few seconds.
No, no, not at all. Now, you imagine you're going down the motorway and your car catches fire.
Now, cars catch fire all the time.
At the moment recalling several hundred thousand vehicles because of a fire risk.
And every manufacturer these days for some reason has fire problems with their vehicles.
Truck fire. Van fire.
Every day, vehicles are catching fire.
40 years ago, they didn't catch fire.
Careful naming which brand Garofone's one of them.
Oh, does it? Well, I won't know.
It would be unfair to name a particular brand, because...
One particular brand is having problems at the moment.
I didn't know that. But the potential, I'll tell you about it later, the potential is for any vehicle to, for that to happen to any modern vehicle.
Now you imagine you're going down the motorway, let's go back to the smart dumb motorway.
We're going down the motorway and it catches fire.
You've got two children in the back in child suits.
Yeah. It doesn't bear thinking about it, to be honest.
No, it doesn't. Because this is happening. We need to think about it.
You know, people are dying.
Yeah. So if you imagine, you've got two children in the back, baby seats, the car's caught fire.
Pre-smart motorway, you'd be on the old children in seconds.
Yeah, you'd have them out of the car. You'd be as far over to the left as you could get, and you'd have the people out the car, you'd be up the...
Stopping in a live lane.
You're going to have to stop in a live lane because if you've just gone past, if you've just gone past an emergency refuge area, you're not going to drive with your car on fire a mile and a half.
No. No, we've put petrol in the car.
It's lethal, isn't it? You're not driving.
You're not doing it. You're going to pull up immediately.
But in them first few seconds that you pull up is when you're most likely to be struck.
Then you've got to get out the car with traffic going by you inches away from your car if you can get the door open.
That's if there's enough room to get the door open.
Then you've got to try and get your children out of the car.
It's insanity. Well, as you say, it's death by design, isn't it?
It's murder by design.
It's a 30-second conversation to realise how lethal they are.
I was speaking to a chap in a shop that I go in regular.
He's learning to drive, but he's not got a licence yet.
Right. I was talking to him only this week.
We got on the subject of driving.
He said he'd had problems getting a driving instructor.
We were talking about it, and we got on the subject of smart wayways, and he knew nothing about them.
He's only just learning to drive.
The moment I explained it means what we've done is we've taken away the emergency lane to make it an all-lane running lane, his immediate response, that's dangerous.
That's going to kill people.
He hasn't got a driving licence yet.
Why can't these idiots in Highways England see this?
Why can't the nine...
We've had nine transport secretaries since this was signed off in 2002.
Since the first agreement to do it in 2002, we've had nine successive transport secretaries.
Five under Labour and four under this current government and the coalition group before it.
And not one of them has questioned the safety of it.
That we might be killing people. And we've been killing people since the start.
But you see, what happens is...
I mean, the one that signed the rollout, Alf, was somebody called Ruth Kelly.
Yeah, I remember her. She was in the post for 15 months.
She signed off Smart Motorway Rollout after about four months in the post.
So very little experience of the job, then?
No experience. None.
None whatsoever.
No. But sign it off.
Oh, sign it. Yeah.
What are we going to do? We're going to kill some people.
I'm not one of them, am I? No.
Oh, that's all right. That's where we're at with these people.
And this subject needs bringing out into the open.
Because a lot of people use the motorways all the time.
They will have experienced this already.
A lot of people use the motorways very occasionally.
Some may only use them at holiday times.
We've got a peak holiday season coming up.
People on the motorway experiencing smart motorways that suddenly appeared for the first time to them.
They ain't got no clue what to do. The other problem you've got is who's told anybody about it?
Did everyone with a driving licence get a leaflet through the post telling them what a smart motorway was?
How it operates?
What to do if you break down?
No. No. See, I've broken down before, and on the motorway, the engine just went bang.
And I, like I said, coasted into the hard shoulder, and that was that.
I wouldn't know what to do if that happened now.
No, well, this is the problem. I wouldn't know what to do.
What you've got to look at, I'm an engineer, I've been an engineer for 45 years.
I understand vehicles.
When something goes wrong, I know what, you know, even if you're driving down the road and something goes wrong, before you've even looked at it, you've got a clue, you've got an idea what's happening, and you know what you've got to do to get out of trouble and avoid a problem.
This is not the case with every motorist.
Very few people drive in these days because of the design of cars.
We go back to the old days of my dad and lots of people.
Sunday morning they'd be tinkering with the cars.
Drivers in them days, your daddy in them days knew everything about the car.
A lot of people, a lot of people's dad, because they tinkered with them.
They're not tinkerable now.
No, no.
You know, so people don't know anything about what's going on under there
because there's nothing they can do if they did.
So to a lot of people, a car is just a means of getting from A to B.
There's no passion about it, there's no connection with it.
They get in, they press a button or turn a key and press a few pedals and turn a big round thing.
And it takes them to where they want to go.
And that's the limit of what they know about it.
Now when they're going down the motorway, a lot of people are frightened of driving on the motorway.
A lot of people are timid and nervous of driving on the motorway.
That's no disrespect to them.
It's how it is. We're all good at something and we're all different.
So what one person's good at, another can be bad at.
And this is how it is.
But we can't stop everybody driving who's not an engineer and proficient and confident.
Otherwise, we don't really get anywhere.
So what you've got to look at as a designer of these roads, we should be looking at all the scenarios.
And the scenarios of people who are not familiar with the road, people who are not familiar with the vehicle, people who might panic when something goes wrong.
These are the things we should be covering.
Now, when we had three lanes on the hard shoulder, everybody understood that.
Very easy to understand, isn't it?
Lane 1, Lane 2, Lane 3, emergency lane.
Commonly known, hard shoulder.
Everybody knew that. Everybody knew if they've got a problem, on the hard shoulder.
You see occasional people pull on the eye shoulder and park right next to the white line.
Well, they're not particularly switched on because you need to be as far over to the left on the eye shoulder as you can.
But they've at least recognised and are aware that the eye shoulder is their safety escape lane if something goes wrong.
You take a person who's feeling ill.
People have heart attacks.
People have all sorts of medical problems these days, far more than they used to in the past.
If you're driving down the motorway and you feel a little bit off...
Very good chance you can make it to the hard shoulder, stop the vehicle and apply the handbrake before, let's say, you pass out or collapse.
You're feeling ill, I'm on the hard shoulder.
You're safe. Relatively.
You can't drive a mile and a half if you're having a heart attack.
No. You can have that heart attack and pass out or die.
And probably cause a pilot up.
Exactly. Or die in the carriageway whilst it's moving.
So, as you've just quite rightly said, then create a massive pileup.
None of this has been included in the thought about it.
I just can't imagine how anybody could pass it.
Well, that's where you've got to look at the more sinister angle of, as you've pointed out, nine transport ministers.
They've all not said anything about it.
So they clearly know the dangers of it.
You'd have to be a complete moron to not.
So they're doing it anyway. I sent an email after the opening of the section 16 to 19 and my experience with the lorry, as I've said earlier.
In the very early days of that opening, it did only be open a few days when this happened.
And what I failed to mention earlier was...
There was no red X above the lane.
This is the other thing they keep throwing at us, you see.
Drivers are ignoring the red X. Well, here's an interesting one.
Last week, I'm passing Leicester Forest East services.
The signs are up.
Now, that's not smart motorway as such there, but we've got big entry signs in there.
So the speed restrictions are on.
Just past the services before the Junction 21 exit, there's been some sort of incident and it's on the hard shoulder.
When we get past that incident, there's a red X on the lane.
Suddenly a red X on the lane.
Everybody's trying to get out this red lane because we've driven up with the speed restrictions on, but there's nothing in the carriageway.
We've gone past an incident on the hard shoulder between Leicester Forest and 21, but it's all on the hard shoulder.
And after we get past the incident, there's a red X up.
There was no red X before it.
There was a red X after it.
Everybody's sweating now because the cameras are on you for the red X. You're being watched.
We're watched everywhere. Let's face it.
We're watched everywhere. So the cameras are on for drivers using the lane with the red X on.
Everybody's fighting to get over.
We can't get over because the motorway is so busy.
We're going under a red X. It's been moved.
Now, this is another problem we've got with the signage.
They can't manage it.
I came down the M69. Halfway down the M69, the signs are lit.
Move over from lane one.
The next sign, move over from lane one and lane two.
So that's telling us there's an incident in lane one and two.
Blocking two lanes. Now, amazingly, on this particular day, it was a Saturday morning, I think.
We were going back sometime last year.
Everybody has got over onto lane 3.
So we're all trundling down lane 3 at walking pace, just above walking pace.
Because don't forget, we've condensed three lanes now into one lane.
Into one, yeah. And we're all pootling down, and we've got all these signs keep telling us there's an incident, incident, incident.
We went all the way to the M1-M69 junction.
Nothing there.
We've travelled halfway down the M69 with these signs telling us there's an incident ahead.
There's nothing there. Now clearly one would assume that earlier there had been an incident.
Yeah, someone's forgot to turn off.
Now, the other question I have is, I find it very difficult to understand.
Maybe I'm thick. Maybe I'm a dump motorway.
When they've attended an incident and the incident is cleared, how difficult is it to call in and say, incident's cleared, revert all signs to normal?
It's not difficult.
No, it's not. But you see it all the time.
Then we've got the speed restrictions they put on.
A lot of them are not done manually.
They're done by an algorithm. Right.
So what they've done, they've looked at the traffic flow over a period of time in this section of the motorway at 8 o'clock on a Monday morning.
So at 8 o'clock on a Monday morning, the signs come up 60, 50, 40.
But they'll come up at 8 o'clock on a bank holiday Monday morning when you're the only vehicle on a motorway.
Yeah. So people see them and think, this is ridiculous.
So then they ignore them. It's the cry wolf scenario.
The signs in themselves are very, very useful.
The signs, we could claim, are smart because they're giving you real-time information.
If we hadn't got Dumb and Dumber controlling them, this is the problem.
If you tell somebody something's happening, make sure it's accurate information.
And they don't do it. And then, of course, the other problem we've got now is that they vary these speed limit signs like a yo-yo.
60, 50, 40, 20, 30, 60 national speed limit.
Now, you can't always, in certain weather conditions, in certain times of daylight, night time, you can't always distinguish 60 from 50.
On the approach. Because they're an LED light.
And LEDs have a halo around them.
Yeah, it's raining as well. Exactly.
So you're coming down the motorway.
You can't really see it until you get there.
So, you know, you're going to raise back a bit, obviously, until you can see it.
But you'll often come on walkhouse for one that says 40 from 70.
Well, that's not a safety aid.
No. That's a disaster.
Yeah. Because we've conditioned people that this camera's on these lights and these are mandatory speed limits now on these smart motorways.
It's a mandatory limit.
So people see the sign.
They panic! My licence!
I'm going to get a ticket!
So they anchor up. Yeah.
The one behind ain't quite paying attention.
Yeah. And he runs in the back of it.
We're not creating safety.
Now, my view on these signs should be that they should always start at 60 because the national speed limit is 70.
They should always start at 60 and should never vary by 10 miles an hour per gantry.
Because if you did that...
Once you've spotted it, you can drop 10 miles an hour over a distance by not really having to break.
Just ease off. Ease off the throttle, yeah.
Ease off the throttle. A little light breaking so the person behind knows you're slowing down.
And you can coast through them 60 miles an hour.
The next one's 50. But you'll come across them where the first one's 40.
It's ridiculous. I went down near Luton a few weeks back.
You're going down the way away. Lane 2 and 3 had got 50 on.
Lane 1, they've got 30 on it.
Now, who's going to see that coming down the motorway?
You're not, no. You're going to come down the motorway, you're going to see the gantry's lit, you're going to catch on 50, yeah.
And on 50, yeah, and you move into lane 1, it's 30.
What's that all about?
If it's not to generate money.
And the other problem we've got, I deal a lot with coaches.
The problem we've got with the coaches with these signs...
Most coaches these days have a toilet on.
The passengers are allowed to use the toilet when the vehicle's in motion.
If they weren't, there wouldn't be a point in having one, would there?
No. You know? We've got a toilet on, but you've got to wait until we stop at the services before you can use it.
Yeah, that's really intelligent. So they're allowed to use it.
So, driver's going down the road.
Sign suddenly comes up. And these things come up instantaneously, don't they?
They can do, yeah. Suddenly come up.
He hasn't got time.
To look in his mirror to see if anybody's walking to the toilet or not.
So he's got two choices.
Go through the sign.
Or brake. And if he brakes and there's a passenger walking to the toilet, he could cause an injury on the coach.
So again, the situation would be, if I was running it, there would be no speed penalty on the first gantry.
No, that would make sense.
It would only be on the second gantry.
So if you happen to be just approaching the first gantry as the signs go up, and you just catch a glimpse of it, you can reduce your speed over a longer period.
You haven't got to do any emergency stops.
From the coach point of view, you're not putting anybody at risk.
And then if you're still speeding on the second gantry, well, okay, fair enough.
You've ignored the signs.
But people don't know whether there is a camera on.
Not every gantry's got a camera on.
But people don't know whether it has or whether it hasn't.
So they've got to assume it has.
They've got to assume it has. And the worst one I ever came across for the signage, the incompetent operation of the signage, was coming around the M42 from the M5 towards Birmingham Airport.
If you've ever done that bit, there's a sweeping bend.
Where the M40 and the M42 meet, you're coming down from Hopwood Park Services End towards...
Yeah, I think I know what you mean. One day, there was no signs lit on the M42 at all.
Halfway around the bend, there's a gantry.
Twenty! Jesus!
Twenty! So what do you do?
Junior emergency stops, so you're doing twenty before you go under the gantry and risk somebody ploughing straight in the back of you.
Would you go through it and take a chance?
There's not a camera on it. These are the other things that need addressing with smart motorways.
They are absolutely appallingly run.
Especially if you're like that coach driver with someone potentially going to the toilet because it's not even like he'd get a ticket and a fine.
He'd lose his job. That's the point.
They blame him for that as well.
They blame him if they went in the back of somebody.
Yeah, you're on a no-win.
What we're not looking at, we're looking at a very, very narrow agenda.
Instead of looking at the bigger picture.
And they are an absolute disaster.
And everyone you speak to knows they're a disaster.
The fire and rescue services can't hate them because they want to go out and save somebody's life.
And they're being hindered by these things.
The highways agency traffic officers hate them because their lives are on the line every day because of these things.
I spoke to one. I spoke to one.
I have no proof of this, but this is exactly how it happened.
When they were rolling them out, I said to one in conversation, knowing that they'd already killed people, but I said to him, you know, you're going to kill people with these motorways.
Oh yeah, we already have, he says.
which is, you know, well yeah, we already have.
But they're not bothered, he says.
I says, oh, not bothered.
No. He says, no, no. He says, they've put a figure on how many it's acceptable to kill.
He says, and we're nowhere near the target yet.
Keep trying. So he says, nobody's bothered.
Now, I'm not going to say what section of the motorway I was on when that was told, because I'm not going to narrow it down to who said it.
But it was said. I've no proof it was said.
I didn't record it.
But this is where we're at.
Everybody who operates the Disaster.
But everybody in a suit in an office thinks they're great.
And every time there's a complaint, I mean, in all credit, there is a group of politicians in the Transport Select Committee.
And to his absolute credit, the head of the AA have been lobbying on this for four years to get this complaint.
Dealt with. And they're being ignored.
Right. Now after I sent, I think I said earlier, I sent an email, after that incident with the lorry, I sent an email to Chris Graylin, Transport Secretary, outlining the dangers.
I didn't get even an acknowledgement that he'd received the email.
You know, just an idiot.
But a few weeks later, a friend of mine sent me an article from Autocar.
There was an 800 million pound...
Going in on the M4 smart motorway.
And allegedly, in the report, the Highways Agency, or Highways England as it is now, acknowledged that on all future schemes, they need to reduce the distance of the emergency refuge area.
Now, bearing in mind it was a half a mile, 800 metres when they first trialled it, and then they rolled it out to a mile and a half, they've now admitted, oh yes, we've made a mistake there, yes, yeah.
Don't worry about the people we've killed in the meantime.
Yeah. Many people, loads of them, we're not worried.
That's got to be the attitude, because if you've got any compassion, you wouldn't bring this bloody idiot stuff in.
No. So, the argument is on the M4 section, yes, we acknowledge we've made a mistake and we're killing people, yeah, we realise that.
But if we move the emergency refuge areas closer together on the M4 section, it's going to delay the project.
Right. So, we're not going to bother on that bit.
We'll do it on some other bits.
So they're sticking it still at a mile and a half?
So when this report came out, it was in Autocar.
I read it online on Autocar.
They were not. Now whether they've changed the policy since, that would be interesting to look that up.
But they've refused to...
Implement them because they'd have to apply for planning permission to put extra lay-bys in.
So that's one government department applying to another government department for a serious safety addition to the motorway.
Which shouldn't be a...
That's going to take a long time for somebody to decide that that's approved, I would have thought.
Yeah. Yeah, like seconds if they've got a brain.
But that's where we're at.
So I sent a second email to Chris Grayley saying...
Now that the Highways England, a government agency, has accepted that they've made a mistake with these things and that we do need to put more emergency refugee areas in, by the way, which won't make a lot of difference, Obviously, the closer they are together, the better.
800 metres are still a long way.
But it doesn't matter how close they are, it's not going to replicate the hard shoulder and the emergency lane.
Because it doesn't matter if there's a lay-by every 100 yards.
It still doesn't give access to the emergency services when the motorways are at a standstill.
So on my second email, I outlined in that that if I was running a company And I'd identified a serious safety issue that could cause serious injury or death to my staff, and I'd chose to ignore it because it wouldn't cost me a bit of money to remedy it, I would be up for corporate manslaughter if any one of those people were injured or killed.
And rightly so. And in my opinion...
And I think I'm still entitled to one in this country.
It was my opinion that every time somebody's killed on the smart motorway, irrespective of the conditions, irrespective of the circumstances, the bottom line is, if we hadn't have made the hard shoulder an all-lane running lane, that person would not be dead.
because rather than being parked in a running lane and being struck at 70 miles an hour,
they would have been parked on the hard shoulder.
And the chances of being struck, whilst the chance of being struck is still there, it's much, much reduced.
And if somebody strikes a stationary vehicle on the hard shoulder, then there's no question that's the driver's
fault who struck it.
But it is not that cut and dried for striking a vehicle in a live lane of a motorway,
because you're just not expecting a vehicle to be there and vehicles can come out.
There is another problem with a group of vehicles at the moment, another quite a few thousand that being 100,000 or so that are being recalled, they've got an electrical fog.
Same brand? Same brand unfortunately as the fire risk at the moment but we won't go there at the moment.
I don't know. I'm going home then.
They've got a problem with an electrical...
This is how I've read it.
I'm not a car engineer.
I don't like cars to be honest.
I like the big stuff.
But they've got a problem with a connection to the fuse box.
And these connections are apparently burning out or failing for some reason.
Now when they fail, the engine cuts out instantly.
So you're there? No warning.
No warning. Dead.
But in addition to the engine cutting out, the whole electrical system is disabled.
So the power steering goes and everything?
If it's electric power steering, the power steering goes.
But most crucially, the brake lights and the hazard lights go.
Right. So you're driving down, let's see the scenario.
We're driving down a motorway in one of these vehicles, and it can happen to any vehicle, it's just a matter So you're driving down the motorway in the dark in foul weather.
The engine cuts out instantly and all the lights have failed.
On a normal motorway you'd only have to negotiate across a couple of lanes, one lane, two lanes or three lanes across and you're on the relative safety of the emergency lane.
If you're in an all lane running motorway, you're in the dark, you're in foul weather,
your car's just cut out and all the electrics have failed, how long do you think you're
going to be surviving in that lane?
Yeah, seconds.
Seconds.
These are the scenarios that need to be considered.
When we're planning something, and these people are supposed to be experts, so when you're
planning something, you should be considering all scenarios.
And they're clearly considered one overriding factor, saving money.
That's all they're interested in.
Saving money.
We have a similar thing on the Artics.
Obviously I'm into the big vehicles.
You may have noticed on these unarticulated vehicles, you've probably noticed a series of curly connections between the tractor and the trailer.
Right, they carry the electrics and they carry the air supply to the trailer braking and suspension systems.
And the air supply systems are two lines, a red line, you'll see them on them, a red line and a yellow line.
Now, if the red line becomes detached, fractured or fails in any way, it causes an automatic emergency operation of the trailer brakes.
Now, if you've ever driven up the motorway and seen a long wavy black skid mark, the width of a vehicle and it's gone from lane one or lane two and it's weaved its way onto the hard shoulder And then it stops, because the vehicle stopped on the old driver.
That will invariably have been an arctic with a failure of the red line, which has caused the emergency application of the trailer brakes.
The brakes have locked.
But an experienced driver We're good to go.
And with it being powered up, it's been able to drag it to the hard shoulder.
Because it's only going to drag it a short distance to clear and it's in safety.
Can't do that on a smart motorway.
You're going to come to a standstill.
But the other thing again, what did we say earlier?
We said earlier the single factor that keeps you safe on the motorway from a collision It's the vehicle in front's brake lights.
They tell you it's slowing down.
If you see an individual brake light come on, you know that lane's slowing down.
If you see a mass of brake lights coming across all lanes, you know there's something happening drastic in front.
You're aware that you need those brake lights.
They're an early warning system.
When this happens on a truck, it doesn't put brake lights on.
No, because the electrics are gone.
Well, nobody's applied brakes, mechanically.
Oh, of course. They've applied.
But they've done it automatically.
So again, nobody's going to see his braking.
But our shoulder there, he's on the hard shoulder.
And he's out of the way. And he's out of the way.
And a vehicle coming up has gone by.
Because the other problem... You'll experience this.
If you're following a vehicle at a safe distance, you're doing the job right, you're driving correctly, you've got a safe distance.
You've got your thinking distance.
You know, some people need a lot longer thinking distance these days, don't they?
Absolutely. Than is in the highway code, actually.
Mostly working for the highways, I think.
So you're going down a motorway, you're going at a motorway speeds, but you've got a safe distance in front.
And it suddenly stops. Let's say the engine's cut out on the car again.
You've travelled a long way at 70 miles an hour.
Before it's registered, then that vehicle's stationary or stopped.
Because the brake light is the trigger.
The brake light, it's straight in.
It's straight in. Red light, danger.
Brakes are on, you immediately start to slow down.
It's subconscious, yeah. If you don't brake immediately, you're covering the brake.
Your foot is off the throttle, on the brake, and you're observing if the brake lights are coming off or going on.
If they're staying on, you're braking, aren't you?
You can't do that if the brake lights don't come on.
And the brake lights can fail for a lot of reasons.
So you've gained that thing.
But that vehicle would not be there if we had a hard shoulder.
Because if something had happened to it, it'd be on the hard shoulder.
You'd go straight past it. It's just...
It is. It is. It is just insanity.
Do you think... I just thought of something while we've been talking, actually.
I hadn't even thought about this with smart motorways.
For everything, there's always a reason.
And theirs is usually money-motivated.
But I've just thought, do you think this could be a factor to do with the rollout of driverless cars or the plan to do that?
Because there'll be so many accidents, they'll say, right, human beings, human error is what's causing these.
Well, this is the problem. That's a very interesting point, that is, because that is another thing that brings you to smart technology.
We have the Tesla in America that didn't see the white Arctic turning in front of it and drove straight into it.
We've had the other case of the one that's got confused and drove into the back of a fire engine parked at a traffic light.
Yeah, the safety tests on driverless cars have been shocking.
Then there's another case quite recently where it got confused with the markings on the off-slip.
So it didn't know whether to go down the off-slip, down the main carriageway, so it split the difference and went through the middle, took the trees and the barriers and the poles out.
The thing with driverless cars is that's a bigger insanity.
Oh, it's insane. An absolute...
Absolutely unbelievable insanity.
I bought a sat-nav. Now, I'm not a great tech.
I like a map and I like to use my brain.
So if I'm going somewhere, I like to open the map, see where I'm going and choose the best route that I think are the fastest route or shortest route or avoiding traffic route.
But eventually, I gave in and bought a sat-nav because people can only give a postcode these days.
You used to ring a driver and say, where are you?
And he'd tell you where he was. Now you ring a driver and you say, I don't know.
I said, but you're there. Ah, but I followed the sat-nav.
So, of course, you're not looking where you're going, eh?
You're not picking up landmarks like you used to, you know, past the pub and, you know, there's a special station on the corner and that's all gone because we're just blindly following the sat-nav.
So I bought this sat-nav.
Now, it's brand new. It was brand new.
And I'm coming out of London.
Up Edgeware Road. I'll go London regular.
But I bought it, and when I bought it, I thought, I'll put it on everywhere I go, and I'll test it out, you know.
So I'm coming up, I'm coming up Edgeware Road, and it says, turn left at the traffic lights.
I thought, ooh, must know a shortcut.
This thing's good, isn't it?
You know, I've been coming in London for years.
I've always come this way, and there's a shortcut.
Until I look at it.
He's telling me to turn left at the traffic lights onto the road I'm already on.
The satellite's gone a bit off.
Yeah. And then I'm coming out of Birmingham, down the A30 A10, heading up to go up the M6 North, and he suddenly lights up all red.
You are going the wrong way down the street!
I thought, I'm not.
When I have a look at it, It's got me on the inbound carriageway of the A38M, and I'm going outbound.
Well, on danger, that road is lethal anyway, because on the way in, it's going in.
At the end of the day...
Yeah, it's coming out of the chase lane.
But that has worked pretty well, actually.
But my question is on that, is...
I'm not into as rivalrous cars.
You know, I think they're going to be a disaster.
But my question is, they've got to be reliant on a certain amount of Well, when it thinks it's on the wrong carriageway, is it going to try and drive to the right one?
Which is actually the wrong one.
You know, we're building planes now with single sensors, aren't we?
Who builds an aircraft with a single sensor?
In my book as an engineer, if you've got something relying on an electronic sensor with a safety critical operation attached to it, I would think you would need a minimum of three with a protocol that two have got to agree in order for something to be activated.
Yes. Now I think that would be a sensible way of going, but we're building planes now with one on.
Yeah, well, there's loads of stuff going on.
Where does that... Well, you know, where do we go?
Everywhere you look, there is stupidity.
You know, the human race has pressed the self-destruct button.
Yeah. It's finished.
Forget saving the planet.
We have had it.
The planet will still be here when we're gone.
Because stupidity is every corner.
It is. Nobody takes a step back.
As I always say, when you're faced with a problem, take two steps back and analyse all the information, make a common sense decision.
People don't. People make a decision on one element of the information.
It's normally cost.
Then it's normally cost.
That's where you've got to look and think, I don't think that many people can be that stupid.
And there's this part of an agenda, as you said.
It's a plan. Something's happening.
Something's happening with people.
Because we're doing things that are just absolutely stupid.
I mean, I don't know how many people we've killed with these smart motorways so far, but what you've got to realise, we have killed people as a result of smart motorway design.
And we're now rolling it out across the country.
And we're rolling it out in greater and greater stretches.
So, you imagine, if you've got a small stretch of smart motorway, the risk of a breakdown on that small section...
It's slim. Because it's only a small section.
You've got to be unlucky, ain't it? You have to break down on that bit.
But the longer we make that...
The more likely it is.
The more likely there is.
I mean, I came back up this section again, 16 to 19.
I came up there one day off a job.
There was three vehicles stationary, broken down in the carriageway, in a space of a mile and a half.
There wasn't one red X up.
Now, when you argue this case, and people have argued it, people have argued it, like the AA and the Trafford Select Committee have argued it, the stock answer from the highways is, well, hard shoulders are dangerous places, you know. Oh, really?
We would never have guessed that.
They are if you drive them 70 miles an hour down one.
Because what they're trying to do, in order to justify this disaster...
That is Smart Motorway.
The signage is not a disaster if we give Dumb and Dumber the sack and employ somebody who knows what they're doing.
The signage is not a disaster.
The all-lane running is the disaster.
And their argument every time when somebody queries it is to demonise the hard shoulder.
So I was reading only this week one of their things they came out with.
The hard shoulder's a very dangerous place, you know.
They keep rolling that one out.
I mean, it must be on a loop.
Yeah. You know? Well, they've been told to say...
The hard shoulder's a dangerous place, you know.
8% of fatalities on normal motorways were on the hard shoulder.
8% of fatalities were on the hard shoulder.
That's a very low percentage.
Now, that means, when I went to school, that 92% were on a wide lane.
Yeah. Yeah. So I know what we'll do.
We'll make them all on the live lane.
I can't fathom it.
No. I can't fathom it.
And what we need to do, we need to raise the awareness of this.
And people need to start contacting Highways England and expressing their dissatisfaction with it.
And we need to open it up.
Because what you get... I mean, I came today because of a recent fatality, which again brought it to the fore.
There was a recent fatality up in the Sheffield area.
And it all hit the news.
It was in the papers and all that now.
For a very, very short space of time.
It's then buried. Yeah.
And nobody says anything.
And of course, we live in one area of the country.
This is happening all over the country.
Yeah. It's very rarely you see it on the mainstream national news.
No, no, you don't. It's local.
So we won't hear about something at the end of the country.
We'll only know about something here.
And this is what they're working on.
They just keep putting out propaganda.
And they're also acting like they're all isolated incidents.
Yeah, they're all isolated incidents.
They're blaming the driver, as we've explained in detail.
You can blame the driver for certain instances.
Yeah. If we go back to when it first started, with the part-time running, now they claim the part-time running, it was very safe.
I, in all honesty, think the part-time use of a hard shoulder is far more dangerous than the full-time use of all the lanes.
Because if it's all lane running, you know it's all lane running, and it's all lane running permanently.
The problem with the part-time use of the hard shoulder, and I've been driving since the It used to be called an all types licence, so I can drive any bus, I can drive any truck.
And I still find them confusing.
Yeah. And I live on the motorway.
You join the motorway, hard shoulder running.
Is it? Isn't it? Might be.
I don't know. Best play safe and not go on it.
But people who are not experienced in using the motorway, they get on the motorway, hard shoulder running.
The next time they get on a motorway, they think it's hard to run it.
Yeah. And it's not. Yeah.
And they hit a stationary vehicle.
It's the driver's fault.
Yeah, okay. We can say the driver should have been looking where we're going.
But it's not that easy on a motorway, as we've already said.
No, not when you're driving hundreds of miles as well.
When you're driving in a straight line, you're not expecting a stationary vehicle in the carriageway.
With no warning. It's not happening.
But it does happen. But we go back, we go back.
It doesn't matter who you blame...
For the individual accident, it would not have happened if we hadn't have brought this system in.
No. And the law of average is if it's being rolled out more, there's just going to be more and more and more.
Absolutely. The longer the stretch, the bigger the risk of vehicles breaking down.
The more there is of it, the bigger the risk of disaster.
Yeah. And I've seen so many.
I travel the motorway daily.
I'm up and down the motorway. I would think the amount of vehicles I've seen stationary in live lanes with a red Exxon is probably 10% of the vehicles I've actually seen stranded in live lanes and on the carriageway without a red Exxon.
Now it may well be that five minutes after I've gone by, there is a red Exxon.
It may be this has only just happened and the thing hasn't reacted.
But it's those first few seconds when you come to a standstill where the danger is.
And you cannot do anything to mitigate that other than get rid of all lane running and make lane one the emergency lane again.
There's no other way of doing it.
You can move the lay-bys as close as you like.
It doesn't open up an emergency lane for the emergency services.
And if you've got to put them that close together, you might as well put another lane in.
Yeah, yeah. You know?
It's madness when you think about it.
And it doesn't take longer than 30 seconds to discuss and realise it's insanity.
It is madness. And everyone who uses a smart motorway cannot guarantee...
Home that night.
Because breakdowns happen all the time.
They do catch fire all the time.
Things go wrong all the time.
Planning. They should have all been accounted for it.
Like I said earlier, you imagine the meeting, you know, oh, we've got to increase the capacity on the motorways.
Oh, I've got a great idea.
I've got a great idea. Oh, we can do it on the cheap.
Oh, what's that? Let's get rid of the emergency lane and make it a running lane.
Yeah, there's no contingency.
Won't that be dangerous? Oh, yeah, but don't worry about that.
And then, as soon as it's proved to be disastrous, start blaming the old children as a dangerous place to be.
Right. Yes, it's a dangerous place to be.
We know that. Nowhere near as damn dangerous as being broke down in my plane, is it?
No, not at all. So anybody who's listening who's interested, lobby Highways England.
Find their email address.
And hassle them. And hassle them.
Well, we'll put something in the comments.
And this is something that everyone should be interested in because it affects...
It affects everybody.
It affects everybody who drives or is likely to be a passenger in any form of vehicle that's going to use the motorway.
Because these are rolling out.
You're not going to do a motorway journey soon, anywhere, without being on a smart motorway for a certain amount of time.
Yeah. And also, people need to get themselves educated on what they are.
So, while they're on them, at the moment, when they're dangerous, at least they sort of have an idea of what's going on.
We do, as a motoring public, as a group, we need to take action ourselves.
Think about the weather conditions.
Think about the visibility you can see.
If the visibility's poor and the weather's atrocious, really think about being in lane one.
Yeah, yeah. Really consider, do I remain in lane one?
Because that's where the disaster is going to happen.
Occasionally, yes, we can have a vehicle come to a grinding halt in lane two, three or four.
But that's rare when the vehicle's travelling because there's normally enough momentum to scoop across the car shoulder.
You normally only get a vehicle broken down in lane two, three or four if there's been a queue.
The risk is minimal when there's a queue because the traffic's all slow moving.
The risk is when it's fast moving.
And most of those vehicles in lane one are your goods vehicles, coaches, one of those goes into your car.
If you're in lane one in a car and you have a sudden failure and one of the lorries is behind you, you're dead.
You're auditioning for a funeral.
That's the only thing you can say.
If you're on a smart motorway and you break down in lane one, you are immediately auditioning for a funeral.
And people need to wake up to this and be aware of it and consider leaving perhaps a greater distance if you're in lane one on a smart motorway so that if something fails without brake lights...
You've got time to react.
Be constantly aware of what's coming up the side of you in lane two.
Can I divert to lane two to avoid it?
We really need to because these people are not going to do nothing.
No. These people are going to carry on being responsible for killing innocent motorists by their crackpot ideas of saving money.
So we need to do something ourselves.
We need to realise the dangers of smart motorways and we all need to be aware of other motorists in distress.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's the thing. Bypass the system altogether.
Absolutely. It is. They won't do nothing.
What we should be doing, we could start, we could make a start by closing lane one to all lane running in hours of darkness and at times of foul weather.
Yeah. But that wouldn't have helped the incident less than two weeks ago because it was in the middle of the day on a clear day.
So these things can happen any time.
Yeah. So people just need to be a bit more aware.
It's okay building something and think, well, people should know where they're going.
But people don't always look.
We don't live in a perfect world.
People are not perfect. Bleach has do not drink written on it.
That's all I'll say. Eh? That's a bottle of bleach and do not drink written.
You have to put that on it.
Well, my classic microwave meal.
Warning will be hot when cooked.
When did that happen? This is the situation we're in.
We have got some stupid people.
Most of them are in authority. We see it every day.
But we have got some people that are not clued up motorists.
But we should be creating systems that allow for that.
Not creating a system where you need to be Einstein to use a motorway.
We should be creating a system where an amoeba could use it.
And that's what you said. Then we're increasing safety.
But of course, you listen to the highways.
As soon as somebody's killed, first thing they do, send their condolences.
Well, you've just killed them.
Yeah. We're very sorry.
Didn't do anything about it?
No, not really.
But we'll be sorry next time.
Yeah. Shove your sorry.
Yeah. Right, thanks for joining us, Paul.
That's okay. I hope I've not bored people to death.
It is a passionate subject.
I know I've probably wandered and waffled, but hopefully we've woken a few people up to the dangers and we can perhaps save some people's lives.
Yeah, fingers crossed. Well, we'll leave you with the fact that a highway representative said they know these roadways will kill people, and they already have, and apparently the government are okay with that.
So just ponder on that, everyone. See you next week.
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