As someone that doesn’t live in the UK, I had to look up what smart motorways were. It seems like the key thing here is that these roads have lights that signal that the hard shoulder can sometimes be used as a lane of traffic. Without a hard shoulder, broken down cars have nowhere safe to stop and must stop in a lane of traffic.
I think the idea is that the systems need to detect stopped cars and mark the affected lanes/shoulders as non-traffic lanes.
I think the idea is that the systems need to detect stopped cars and mark the affected lanes/shoulders as non-traffic lanes.