Justin Mercer would have turned 46 this week had it not been for the tragic accident that occurred on a smart motorway on 7 June 2019.
His widow, Claire Mercer, has been campaigning with Smart Motorways Kill against Highways England ever since giving up her job in her efforts to get justice and much-needed closure.
Her latest campaigning effort was to put up a billboard outside the South Yorkshire Police Headquarters in an effort to make them take her seriously.
Image from the Smart Motorways Kill Facebook page
She said: “I have been pushing the police for over a year now to investigate Highways England for corporate manslaughter.
“They put a year into investigating the driver of the HGV that killed Jason, but he’s only done it once, Highway England have now done it 44 times.”
Government statistics in January showed that 38 people had been killed on smart motorways in the past five years.
The man behind the initiative, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, said that he went about the wrong way in solving the problem.
He said: ‘It was entirely wrong to build a so-called smart motorway without the technology in place to make it safer.”
‘Stopped Vehicle Detection’, the technology that was supposedly brought in to fix the issue, spots if a car or vehicle is stopped and will aim to lessen the chance of accidents.
Mr Shapps has pledged to complete the roll-out of SVD on existing schemes by the end of next year.
Photo by Ross Sneddon on Unsplash
Ms Mercer, however, is convinced that the only solution is to scrap the smart motorways altogether.
She said: “The stopped vehicle detection won’t do enough. It doesn’t work properly, it only works in what it considers optimum conditions.”
She also pointed out that not only is the initiative causing accidents, but it also is hindering emergency services in getting to the accident site in time.
“All this technology, all those radars none of this helps emergency services. When there’s four lanes of traffic an ambulance can’t get through.”
Speaking about the next steps in the campaign she said: “I’m going to really keep the focus on prosecuting Highways England. We know the danger of smart motorways, it’s not manslaughter anymore it’s murder. They just don’t care. Maybe if their personal liberty is put at risk they will care.”