Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of the potential impact of smart motorways on (a) levels of congestion and (b) driver safety.

National Highways produces annual smart motorways stocktake progress reports which cover the latest safety data and progress on delivering the 2020 Stocktake actions. National Highways published its Smart motorways stocktake - Second year progress report 2022 in May 2022. The latest data (2016 to 2020) shows that shows that, overall, in terms of serious or fatal casualties, smart motorways are the safest roads on the Strategic Road Network. The next annual report is due to be published in Spring 2023.

National Highways also produces Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) reports ‘one year after’ and ‘five years after’ the opening of a road scheme covering all scheme impacts, including journey time reliability and safety. Reports are published on the National Highways website.