Recently we've encountered some of these new fangled "smart" motorways; basically this means abolishing the hard shoulder to put in an extra lane.

Recently while going down to London I was in the inside lane and saw the breaklights of the car in front whioch then ground to a halt and soon the whole lane had come to a standstill.

Someone three cars in front had either broken down or ran out of fuel.

This led to a tailback in the lane with a whole stream of vehicles trying to pull out into two lanes of fast traffic.

How long is it before there are major pile-ups - and how are emergency vehicles supposed to get to the scene when there is no hard shoulder.

There is a small lay-by type thing about every 1.5 miles but a broken down vehicle would, in all probability not be able to get to it.