Industry News from Yes Insurance

A leading MP and campaigner on road safety issues has attacked the government's hard shoulder initiative.

The scheme is currently being trialled on the M42 and involves the opening up of the hard shoulder during periods of congestion in order to reduce traffic jams.

However, Liberal Democrat MP, Bob Russell, is furious with the government for allowing the idea to go ahead and says the action is "grossly irresponsible".

"Hard shoulders have been provided on motorways as a place for broken down vehicles to stop in relative safety, but even so there have been deaths," he said.

"I consider it grossly irresponsible for the government to even experiment with using hard shoulders for moving traffic. They are putting people's lives at risk.

"Putting to one side the observation that the government is not sure whether ten or 11 people were killed in 2003 in crashes on the hard shoulder, the stark fact is that a deliberate decision to use hard shoulders for moving traffic is not in the interests of road safety and is likely to increase - not decrease - the number of crashes, injuries and deaths," he added.

Mr Russell hints that we could see a rise in car insurance claims if the project goes national as he has uncovered statistics which show 33 people were killed in crashes on hard shoulders in 2002 and 2003.

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