Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many deaths there have been (a) on (i) conventional and (ii) smart motorway hard shoulders and (b) on smart motorway rest areas in the last five years.

In May 2022, National Highways (NH) published its ‘Smart motorways stocktake Second year progress report 2022’, with the latest available five-year (2016-2020) safety data per road type.

a) The data in the ‘Smart motorways stocktake Second year progress report’ shows that for the period 2016-2020 there were 28 fatal casualties (out of a total of 403 fatal casualties on motorways) resulting from a motorway collision which involved a vehicle recorded as entering, leaving or on a hard shoulder, which is 1 out of every 14 fatal casualties. Of these fatalities, 26 occurred on conventional motorways, 2 on controlled motorways and none on a Dynamic Hard Shoulder (DHS) motorway. (There were 2 additional fatal casualties on DHS motorways which occurred when the hard shoulder was operating as a live lane the collisions are categorised as live lane collisions and included in the DHS live lane data).

b) Between 2016 and 2020, there were no fatalities in emergency areas.