The "devastating" deaths of two women might have never happened were it not for "dangerous" changes to the busiest and fastest motorways, according to their devastated family.
Sevim Uston, 49, and Ayse Uston, 68, tragically died after being hit by an articulated lorry on the 'smart' M25 motorway in 2018. Now, the government has scrapped the motorway scheme it spent rolling out over the last 10 years.
Planned new smart motorways have been scrapped by the government following years of concerns by motoring experts and campaigners. But dozens of lives have been lost on these stretches of motorway before getting to this point, amid claims the public has lost confidence in them.
Smart motorways were rolled out over the last decade, removing the hard shoulder and turning it into a live traffic lane in some cases. Changes were made to reduce congestion and allow more traffic to move along motorways, but these changes were described as leaving people "dangerously stranded" by one ex-traffic cop.
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At times when motorways are particularly busy, overhead gantries can be used to instruct drivers to use the hard shoulder as it becomes a live running lane, reports EssexLive. But the removal of the hard shoulder sparked concerns about what would happen if drivers got into trouble and were unable to reach refuge areas, as happened in the cases of a number of victims, with several coroners choosing to speak out at inquests to criticise them.
Smart motorways have been linked with thousands of 'near-misses'. A Freedom of Information request in 2020 revealed that in the five years before the M25 became a smart motorway there were 72 near misses, compared to the five years after where there were 1,485.
On March 19, 2018, Murat Uston was driving his Audi back from his fiance's house in Luton with his grandmother, mother and ten-year-old sister. He suddenly heard a "thumping" noise so decided to pull over between junction 27 and 26, near Waltham Abbey, fearing a tyre had separated from the wheel.
With the absence of a hard shoulder and the barriers preventing him from pulling up on the verge, the car was parked in the left lane with its hazards and lights on to alert other road users. Murat and the others then climbed over the barrier, standing four metres back from the smart motorway where they thought they were safe.
But in the space of just seconds, an Eddie Stobart lorry ploughed into the back of the silver Audi, smashed through the barriers hitting the family as they stood there helplessly. The crash claimed the lives of both Sevim and Ayse and also left the young girl with injuries so severe her ‘hip has stopped growing.’
The driver of the lorry, Krzysztof Zarebski, 34, of Gordon Street in Coventry, was charged with two counts of death by careless driving. Zarebski was given four months in prison suspended for 12 months and was also ordered to undertake 200 hours of unpaid work, disqualified from driving and ordered to pay the victim surcharge.
Benjamin Waidhofer, mitigating on behalf of Zarebski, highlighted the controversy surrounding smart motorways like the M25 and argued that there could have been just one second for him to avoid the crash.
He said: "If there had been proper provision for refuge areas, the accident wouldn't have happened."
Judge Charles Grawicke, who presided over the case, added: "That section where the collision occurred is part of what has come to be known as a smart motorway, that is to say, that there was no hard shoulder or refuge into which a car suffering from a mechanical defect could be driven and it was for that reason that the Audi was stationary in lane one when it was hit from behind by a lorry travelling in the same direction.
"The effect of the collision was devastating on the Uston family. Sevin and Ayse, Mr Uston's grandmother and mother, who had been sheltering behind the crash barriers, were killed instantly and his sister sustained the life-threatening injuries that in court we have heard about.
"A family was torn apart as the victim impact statements make clear and I make it clear as I have said in many a case, there is nothing the court can say or do which can in any way fill the void in the lives of those who were remained."
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