Motorways: Emergency Services

(asked on 14th December 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate his Department has made of the (a) longest and (b) shortest amount of time taken for rescue vehicles to reach vehicles that have broken down on smart motorways in each of the last 5 years.


Answered by
Rachel Maclean Portrait
Rachel Maclean
This question was answered on 17th December 2020

The number of accidents has been taken to mean the number of injury casualties. The tables in Annexes B, C and D of the Smart Motorways Evidence Stocktake and Action Plan show the number of reported casualties by road class on England's Strategic Road Network (SRN) for slight, serious and fatal casualties. These tables show the casualty split on different types of motorway. These tables are attached for ease of reference. Highways England is currently analysing the 2019 data and, when available, will analyse the 2020 data, which is expected to be in Autumn 2021.

The last full year of data available is for 2019, the statistic for which are set out in the table 1, note that ‘motorway’ refers to ‘conventional motorways’ excluding all other types set out in the table.

As outlined in the published STATS19 data, the number of incidents increased across the network in 2019, and the amount of All Lane Running (ALR) sections of the network also increased over this period. In the time available, it has not been possible to provide data on accidents and breakdowns for each stretch of motorway.

Highways England does not hold data for the attendance of incidents by vehicle recovery companies or the emergency services.

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