Classic car owners are taking detours to avoid smart motorways for fear of being hit from behind while stopped in live lanes.
Drivers of cars older than 25 years said motorways without a hard shoulder have ‘too many risks’ because their vehicles’ age makes them particularly susceptible to breaking down.
AA chief Edmund King said the Government and National Highways should ‘go back to the drawing board’ and return the inside lane of all-lane-running smart motorways to being a hard shoulder.
Alan Hames, who was a highways engineer for more than 50 years before retiring, said he takes detours to avoid smart motorways when driving his 1972 Jaguar E-Type. He added 26 miles to a return trip from his home in Northamptonshire to a recent car event in London by using the M40 – which has a hard shoulder – rather than the M1, which does not.
Breaking down on a smart motorway ‘brings too many risks for classic car owners’, the 80-year-old said. ‘I know many other classic car owners who take long detours to avoid these deadly smart motorway death traps. At least a hard shoulder gives drivers the option of getting to relative safety.’
Gaynor Cauter, editor of Jaguar Driver magazine, said: ‘I hear regularly from drivers of Jaguars – classic and modern – who are so frightened of breaking down on smart motorways that they make every effort to avoid them, and I include myself in that number,’ she said.
‘However, on some journeys, they are almost impossible to avoid.’
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