Another statistic

[Seeker]

For health and safety purposes, the government has calculated how much our lives are worth. It's called the VPF (Value of a Prevented Fatality) and you're worth £2 million. According to Professor Philip Thomas it's hopelessly undervalued and should be £8.6 million (in the US it's $11.2/£8.2 million).

It matters in this instance because the government use it to plough on with smart motorways (the ones where the hard shoulder becomes another lane).
These rely on someone seeing your breakdown on CCTV to block off the lane which takes, on average 17 minutes. The AA/RAC won't respond to a breakdown until the lane has been closed and barriers erected.

It's an interesting read, if a bit worrying if you're a smart motorway user.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...motorways-safe

[Bibio]

its nothing to do with no hard shoulder its do do with people not being able to drive properly. or fail to maintain their vehicles. stupid is as stupid does.

ooohhh and your life will be worth fek all in a few years when the gov decide that all those EU Health and safety laws dont apply to the UK anymore.

[Ruffy]

OK, I'll bite.

This sort of calculation is nothing new. It's been a cornerstone of the insurance industry for many years - how else do you think underwriting liabilities are assessed (e.g. likely third party payout for an insured driver hitting & killing a random bystander)?

This will always be an emotive area and there will always be examples supporting polarised and conflicting positions. It's saddening when people die in road traffic incidents but it needs a reasoned and fact based debate to be seen properly in perspective. The unfortunate truth is that the average person isn't able to objectively assess the risk and deal with the inevitable trade-offs of the various conflicting priorities that this sort of project or infrastructure require.

Many folk just don't get that "safe" is relative. If we extrapolate the same doom-sayer logic with a bit of 'find and replace' word processing it doesn't take much to get to "people die on roads, we need to ban roads" type headlines. How many takers for that?

Whilst no-one consciously contemplates the possibility before each journey, there is never a guarantee that death will not happen on next trip out. (Although as bikers, we're probably more aware than most.)

In the case of our motorways, solving (or at least easing) the congestion problem whilst retaining a full hard shoulder provision would require the acquisition of two full lanes worth of land, often occupied by other things (buildings, businesses, amenities etc.) That's a wide corridor and comes at a very large cost even before extra construction cost is estimated. And don't underestimate the real environmental impacts that come with creating something of that scale too (even before we get to dealing with that imagined by protesters).

The continuous hard shoulder concept for motorways was conceived in the 1950s/60s. Today's world is very different so the answer might need to be different too. Today's hard shoulders are far from 'safe'.

My personal position is that it's a shame we have to remove continuous hard shoulder 'just-in-case' facility but it is an acceptable trade-off in the interests of keeping traffic moving and not decimating local environments that motorways pass through. (I hate being stuck in stop/start traffic queues even more!)


(Disclosure: I am a former employee of Highways England. I didn't work on Smart Motorways myself but I did work alongside several people who do, as well as liaising with many more in the office and out on the network. I will defend their work because I found them to be very professional people who are personally invested in providing a beneficial improvement to the motorway network. They consider the safety issues very carefully, learning from new events as they happen and always very aware what the potential downside is as the they try to optimise a complex situation, implementing Government policy to try to ensure general public can make the journeys they want to. They should not be demonised.)

[svenrico]

Originally Posted by Seeker

It matters in this instance because the government use it to plough on with smart motorways (the ones where the hard shoulder becomes another lane).
These rely on someone seeing your breakdown on CCTV to block off the lane which takes, on average 17 minutes. The AA/RAC won't respond to a breakdown until the lane has been closed and barriers erected.

It's an interesting read, if a bit worrying if you're a smart motorway user.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...motorways-safe

If this is correct then how can smart motorways be safe ?!

[embee]

Having monetary values for things is simply a consequence of having a money based society. If we want things done and someone somewhere has to provide the materials and service, then short of a system of state ownership and slavery, there will be payment or recompense using money.
Putting a "cost on a death" is not the same as putting a "value on a life", even though the amount of ££ might be the same sum. Deciding how much can be spent to avoid a likely death (or serious injury, which can work out more expensive if life changing for 60yrs etc) introduces philosophical elements into the debate. It will always be a difficult one, and will often not have a right or wrong solution, it will be grey.
I think there are certainly big issues with multi-lane motorways without refuge areas. Certainly if there is no way to escape the road area it should not be allowed, where there is a wall beside the lane for example. I think the speed of the traffic is crucial, 70mph (folk doing 80) is far too fast for these situations, lack of concentration/observation means late recognition of an obstacle and inevitable collisions, that's just the way the real world works. People not actively expecting an obstacle will take a significant time to actually process the scene and realise they need to react. Maybe the max speed for these systems should be perhaps 40, at least it would give slightly more chance for the drowsy/inattentive to react.