There was traffic chaos on motorways across the UK as the smart motorway systems crashed. Highways officers had to be dispatched to the most dangerous stretches of road to help vehicles stay safe.
The problem started at around 8.30am when the DYNAC system, which operates gantries and signs on most smart motorways and the SVD system (radar-based stopped vehicle detection) both crashed.
The system failure also affected all electronic smart motorway signs and signals, and the problems were not fixed until 10:30am.
A source at National Highways told LBC that the outage affected most smart motorways in England.
But National Highways have since clarified that smart motorways in the South East and East were not affected, and that CCTV was still operational during the outage.
There are currently 44 stretches of smart motorways in operation or under construction, all located in England.
Labour MP Sarah Champion, led a debate on smart motorways in Westminster Hall, in the Houses of Parliament earlier today and it coincidentally started half an hour after the systems were back up and running.
She said she was “staggered” that National Highways did not put out emergency notices on the overhead gantries when there are issues like this.
The MP for Rotherham added: “Why don’t they tell us? How are we meant to trust them? It staggers me.”
She is calling for hard shoulders to be reinstated with immediate effect and added: “Ministers know smart motorways are death traps.”
National Highways operational control director Andrew Page-Dove said: “We are urgently investigating an unplanned outage of our traffic management system that took place this morning.
Read More: Traffic chaos as smart motorway systems crash across UK – all signs and signals down
