Coroner issues latest smart motorways warning after teenager died in M1 crash

A coroner has issued yet another warning against smart motorways after a teenager who died in a crash on the M1 became the fifth fatality in two years. 

The assistant coroner for Bedfordshire and Luton, Tom Stoate, has written to Highways England after a teenager died and two others ended up in comas when they broke down on a smart motorway without a hard shoulder. 

Mr Stoate has called for urgent action after a detective said the teenagers would not have come to such harm if there had been a hard shoulder.  

Zahid Ahmed, 19, was killed when the people carrier he was in stopped before an emergency refuse area on the smart motorway and was hit by a lorry at 56mph. 

Four other teenagers in the vehicle, students at Middlesex University, ended up in hospital. 

They had been returned from a pool competition in Birmingham on December 1, 2019, and broke down while travelling southbound on the M1 near Luton where the hard shoulder was open to traffic. 

Highways England did not see the stranded vehicle and so did not close the lane.  

Mr Stoate’s report, seen by The Telegraph, says: ‘The vehicle in which the deceased was a passenger suffered a mechanical defect which caused it to lose power.

‘It is not clear where the vehicle could have pulled to a halt in a safe place in these circumstances, given that there was no hard shoulder and all lanes were live.’

And Mr Ahmed’s brother told the publication: ‘If there had been a hard shoulder, the car would have had somewhere to stop, this terrible accident would not have happened and my brother would be alive.

The assistant coroner for Bedfordshire and Luton, Tom Stoate, has called for urgent action after a detective said the teenagers would not have come to such harm if there had been a hard shoulder

‘Hard shoulders are there explicitly to prevent accidents like this when a car breaks…