Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 30 November to Question 93553 on Motorways: Safety, of the 10% of vehicles stopped in live lanes on all-lane running motorways not detected within 60 seconds, in how many instances detection took more than (a) five and (b) ten minutes in 2022.

National Highways has established processes for monitoring the performance of stopped vehicle detection where it is in place on all lane running sections of smart motorway, collecting samples of operational data covering emergency areas and live lanes. National Highways currently has 17 days’ worth of operational sample data covering the period 2021 and 2022.

From this data, an average of around 98.3% of vehicles stopped in live lanes or emergency areas were detected within 5 minutes, and around 99.7% within 10 minutes. There were single figures of cars that took over 10 minutes to detect.

Please note that as the sample of the data evolves, there may be further changes to the figures presented. As the data is based on a sample dataset, any extrapolation or conclusions should be made with caution.