A smart motorway safety system failed across much of England on Wednesday, National Highways has admitted.
The Dynac system – which includes signs, signals and stopped vehicle detection technology – stopped working at around 8.30am on Wednesday.
The fault occurred across the whole of England’s smart motorway network except in the East and South East.
It was not resolved until approximately 10.30am.
The cause of the problem is under investigation.
There have been long-standing safety fears following fatal incidents in which vehicles stopped in live lanes on smart motorways without a hard shoulder were hit from behind.
National Highways operational control director Andrew Page-Dove said: “We are urgently investigating an unplanned outage of our traffic management system that took place this morning.
“Engineers worked hard to get the system back online as soon as possible and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.
“We have well-rehearsed procedures to deal with issues which arise.
“We rapidly took steps to help ensure the safety of road users such as increased patrols and CCTV monitoring.”
Smart motorway safety systems reportedly suffered a seven-hour outage on October 26.
Edmund Kind, AA president, said: “So called ‘smart’ motorways cease to be ‘smart’ when the technology fails, and drivers in dangerous live-lane situations are left as sitting ducks.
“Road users can only have confidence in the systems if the technology works. That’s clearly not the case with the outage today. Some 38% of breakdowns on ‘smart’ motorways occur in live lanes as often there is nowhere to go and these situations, with or without technology, are terrifying.
“While somewhat ironic that the systems should fail on the day their safety is debated in Parliament, perhaps it is now time to go back to the drawing board and totally redesign these roads as drivers have lost faith in their safety.”