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More than 1,000 motorists a week are being caught speeding on the UK's smart motorways, police figures suggest.
Last year, 52,516 fixed penalties were issued on 11 smart sections, including on stretches of the M1, M25 and M6.
This compared to 2,023 on the same stretches in 2010-11, before they were upgraded to smart motorways - which use the hard shoulder and variable speed limits to control traffic flow.
The government says they are used to improve capacity, not generate revenue.
Smart motorways are operated by Highways England, which uses overhead gantries - also containing speed cameras - to direct traffic into open lanes and change speed limits depending on the volume of traffic.
Ticket revenue has increased tenfold over 5 years. Have British drivers experienced the "improved capacity" that the government uses to justify the smart highways?
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday November 08 2016, @02:45PM
Not his problem, and in fact - for better or for worse - most of those idiots are not even remotely aware of the trouble they are causing(*).
Not only that, but I don't think people are aware of how little time they are saving -- and sometimes even losing time.
Years ago, I remember when I was stuck in traffic on a highway and rather bored, and I saw this big car with gold hubcaps (you know the type) traveling beside me. It was driving very aggressively even though the traffic was basically stopped on the highway, with moments of moving ahead that never went above 10-15 mph.
I watched this ostentatious car switching lanes whenever he could to move into whatever lane seemed to be moving a bit at the moment. In the process, he often ended up causing more braking and probably was helping to propagate the slow traffic backwards even further.
But the interesting thing is although he moved ahead of me a bit early on, over the 20 minutes or so I was stuck in this slow traffic, this car gradually ended up behind me. Farther and farther, until it was lost in the distance. Here was a guy trying to take every opportunity to get ahead when he saw a lane moving a bit, but actually it was counterproductive and ended up making less progress than if he had just stuck with any lane and went with it. (Mostly I think this happened because by the time enough traffic was moving in a given lane to open up a gap large enough for him to swap, the moving segment was past its midpoint... so he was perpetually moving to lanes just to get a smaller amount of the forward progress than if he had just stayed in a lane.)
I'm not saying this is always true, but it showed me that the aggressive strategy of trying to "outsmart" traffic doesn't always work. (And of course, even if it did, it's unlikely to save this person more than a minute or so, unless there was an obvious lane imbalance before a merge or something.)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday November 08 2016, @06:07PM
It is possible to go consistently faster than the stop-and-go traffic by changing lanes just as your lane starts slowing.
It is extremely justified to be called an asshole for doing it.