Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many incidents occurred in which (a) Stopped Vehicle Detection systems and (b) overhead warning gantries were offline as a result of technical failures across the smart motorway network in the last 12 months.

Smart motorways have a whole system of inter-related safety features, not present on conventional motorways, which means there is no over-reliance on one single feature. When outages do occur, National Highways has well-rehearsed procedures to deal with issues when they arise and additional measures can be taken to limit any impact on drivers, including extra traffic officer patrols and virtual CCTV patrols.

For the month of September 2022, the national availability of Stopped Vehicle Detection technology was recorded at over 98%, and for warning signs at over 90%. National Highways has already taken action to continue to improve warning signs availability to meet the 95% availability target they have.