According to a coroner, a hard shoulder might have prevented the deaths of two elderly people involved in a crash on a smart highway.
The M1’s inside lane near Sheffield experienced a tyre blowout, forcing Derek Jacobs, 83, to stop his van.
He passed away as he exited the car and Jean Scripps’ red Ford Ka crashed into it.
A bus struck the automobile after it flipped over on the road and ended up on its side, as shown on video.
Mrs Scripps’s husband Charles, 78, was in the front passenger seat and died in hospital two months after the collision in March 2019.
Concluding both men died as a result of the crash, assistant coroner Susan Evans said: ‘Smart motorways are hugely controversial because of the lack of any hard shoulder for motorists to use in times of need such as occurred here.
‘It is immediately apparent that, had there been a hard shoulder, this incident would not have occurred because Mr Jacobs would have been able to pull off the live lane entirely.’
But the coroner added: ‘That said, there are many roads in the road network, including dual carriageway A-roads, that are subject to the national speed limit and do not have the benefit of any hard shoulder.’
She heard there was no evidence that Mrs Scripps took any action to avoid the collision, despite Mr Jacobs parking his van almost touching the crash barrier.
Miss Evans added: ‘It is evident Mrs Scripps simply did not see the stationary van before she collided with it.
‘For reasons we will never know, she appeared to have not been paying attention to the road.’