The Highway Agency is all set to turn off the lights in a bid to both save money and reduce pollution, the next lot for the “switch off” is the M1 Bedfordshire between Junction 10 and 15 the Luton to Milton Keynes stretch, they will only be turned off at the quieter times overnight.
Andrew Howard the head of safety at the AA said “We think there will be a number of operational issues. Where you can and can’t be is defined by signals and without lights there is a greater chance that people will make a mistake.”
Derek Turner counter this by saying “Since 2009 we’ve switched lighting off between the hours of midnight and 5am on 14 carefully selected stretches of motorway and evidence so far indicates that switching off the lights hasn’t had an impact on safety. In March this year we also began permanently switching off motorway lights at three sites.”
The main argument being the switch off will only take place when there is very little traffic on the stretches and that the money saved can be spent elsewhere on our road network.