A review of the new “Smart” Motorways has been ordered by the transport secretary after the death of a women on the M1 in South Yorkshire.

Last month the local coroner asked the Crown Prosecution Service to consider corporate manslaughter charges against Highways England in a review of the incident.

The idea of the “smart” motorways is to increase road capacity by removing the permanent hard shoulder to create an extra lane.  Refuge areas are then located every 1.5 miles and a red-light system on the overhead gantries warns drivers that the inner lane is closed if the vehicle cannot make an emergency layby.

Transport secretary Grant Shapps in a statement to Parliament said that the system had been put in place before his appointment and has asked the Office of Road and Rail (ORR) to study data on these stretches of road to ensure that the figures are “robust”.

www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-transport

www.orr.gov.uk