Kate Carpenter, CIHT Fellow

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Spreaker

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 Transcript available (use captions facility on YouTube):  

On the 16th of June 2021 – CIHT’s Fellow – Kate Carpenter gave evidence on behalf of CIHT to the Transport Select Committee hearing on smart motorways.  The interview for this podcast features the extracts of the hearing.  The podcast starts with an interview, from explaining what smart motorways are, to how behaviour changes in the context of environments that people operate within.  There is also a discussion on how data is reported. 

Key extracts from the interview include:

What we need to do is make sure it's clear to people that  motorways are the safest roads.  That our motorways are safer than pretty much anyone else's motorways.  Our smart motorways are safer than other motorways. And to some extent once the fear is in place it can be quite hard to elevate that, but  the transparency of what has happened and making sure it is very open and honest....[is vital]

What drivers choose to do changes in the context of the place where they are so for example most stops on motorways are illegal discretionary stops now - people choosing to stop for all-sorts of reasons...that people do in normal life on motorways 

There’s no doubt a very large number of people are extremely anxious - partly because of poor quality reporting - for example reporting the number of deaths on smart motorway without reporting the comparable deaths on a comparable extent of conventional motorways.  For me that’s poor journalistic standards.