Wolverhampton biker blames smart motorway for injuries
A biker from Wolverhampton has blamed smart motorways for a life-changing accident which left him with serious injuries
Jack Gallowtree, 33, was travelling from Manchester when his motorbike started to lose power near Junction 18 on the M6 southbound on April 26.
The model and tattooist told CheshireLive what would've been the hard shoulder was being used by two lorries as a legal lane and time was of the essence.
He felt he needed to go in front of them to reach the side of the carriageway before his bike stopped. However, one of his wheels left the tarmac when he reached the side of the road.
He bucked to the left at 60mph before crashing, shattering his left leg so badly emergency surgery needed a skin graft and left it a centimetre shorter, according to the reports.
Jack said: "Smart motorways are death traps whose existence is completely nonsensical. I could have pulled in, could have took the tools off my bike and checked if I could have made any adjustments, if it couldn't be resolved, I could have waited for breakdown recovery.
"No harm whatsoever, but instead I have life-changing injuries and I could have died. It's not an effective alternative anyway, seeing as the lanes don't seem to close for breakdowns and then what if you come to a sudden stop as a breakdown, but you have a HGV right behind you.
"There's no safety element whatsoever to them. I have seen the statistics in the increase in deaths because of these things and now it has personally affected me now, I think these things need to go."
A Highways England spokesman told CheshireLive: "Our thoughts are with the motorcyclist and we wish him well with his recovery.
'While the police are investigating, we're unable to provide further comment on this specific collision. Every serious accident on our network is one too many.
"However, overall, our motorways are among the safest in the world, and the Government's recent evidence stocktake established that in most ways smart motorways are at least as safe as, or safer than, the conventional motorways they replaced.
"We will continue implementing the stocktake's findings, and will work with drivers to make increasingly busy motorways safer for everyone who uses them."
