National Highways have dodged the bullet with the announcement that prosecutions over two Smart Motorways deaths have been dropped.
The criminal investigations came after the deaths of Nargis Begum in September 2018 following a breakdown close to Woodhall Services on the M1 and Jason Mercer and Alexandru Murgeanu in June 2019 when a lorry crashed into them after they came to a halt following a minor collision.
Following the death of the former South Yorkshire police carried out a scoping excercise into vicarious liabilty and whether the government owned company who operates the Strategic Road network had failed in its duty of care to its customers, the road user with regards to the death of Begum.
However the force have now confirmed that the investigation has now ended.
South Yorkshire's temporary assistant chief constable Sarah Poolman said: "Having considered the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) advice, we have concluded that in the circumstances, Highways England [now known as National Highways] cannot be held liable for the offence of corporate manslaughter.
"This is because, in legal terms, the organisation did not owe road users a 'relevant duty of care' under the terms set out in the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007.
"For this reason, I have brought the police investigation into this offence to an end."
Subsequently an inquest into the deaths of Jason Mercer and Alexandru Murgeanu died in June 2019 when a lorry hit them, called for a fresh inquest into all lane running and indeed concluded that the lack of a hard shoulder contributed to their deaths (first reported in NCE).
Reacting to the news that National Highways would not be held accountable Mercer's wife was visibly dismayed by the outcome, saying to New Civil Engineer,
"I don't understand how they can say [National Highways] don't have a duty of care to motorists. How do you justify that?
"They build the roads, they supply the roads."
Since 2019 when a Panorama programme aired on the BBC the safety of smart motorways and the protection which the removal of a hard shoulder offers to the road using public has repeatedly been called into question.
In March of 2021 transport select committee launched an enquiry into the safety of Smart Motorways which has subsequently resulted in the "pausing" of the programme, following an increase in deaths, and until 5 years of safety data is available, something which is not expected anytime soon, leading to many seeing the approach as a way of kicking the issue into the long grass and hoping it will simply go away.
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