Drivers ignoring roadwork closures to skip queues ‘wilfully putting lives at risk’

Drivers ignoring roadwork closures to skip queues are putting lives at risk, National Highways has warned, after recording hundreds of incidents this year where cars were deliberately driven through cones or barriers.

The agency, which manages motorways and major roads, said there was increasing concern about incursions into closed-off roadworks and the danger they posed.

It said its works contractors had reported an increasing proportion of such incidents as deliberate. According to National Highways data, 53% of the 814 incursions reported nationwide in England between January and July this year involved drivers trying to avoid queues, closures or diversions.

Repeated dangerous driving around roadworks has led National Highways to close parts of motorways to protect workers rather than just closing lanes, causing significant delays for road users.

To highlight the issue, the agency released clips showing drivers entering closed-off roadworks areas, which led to successful prosecutions and driving bans. They included footage of the M1 motorway in Hertfordshire, where repeated incursions earlier this year led to it being closed completely to keep workers safe, creating a 10-mile diversion for drivers. There were no casualties in any of the incidents shown.

On average, about 30 incursions a week are recorded across England’s motorways and A-roads. While most are defined as “seeking benefit” – drivers deliberately entering restricted roadwork areas hoping for a short cut – factors including breakdowns or simple driver error also lead to dangerous incursions.

In the latter cases, however, most drivers quickly stop and seek assistance, according to Melanie Clarke, the director of health, safety and wellbeing at National Highways. She said the latest figures showed “a worrying number of drivers wilfully ignoring roadworks to save time, putting road workers and other people at risk”.

Clarke said: “This year alone there have been over 400 incidents of those ‘seeking benefits’ as we describe it. We are definitely seeing a rise. We really encourage our road workers to report these instances so we can understand the level of the risk that they are facing when they are simply just trying to do their jobs.”

She added: “Drivers who just come through to avoid the closure or diversion are often travelling at speed and not necessarily aware of the activities that are going on within the roadworks. Often there’s plant, there’s machinery, the surface may already been treated. Obviously our concern is for our road workers – but those drivers need to understand that they also put themselves at risk.”

At least one fatality had occurred because of incursions this year, Clarke said.

She added that, contrary to occasional driver perception, roads were never sealed off without some activity ongoing or imminent. “If you don’t see people working, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people working nearby. Or maybe the road surface has been compromised in some way in order to complete the work. So it’s simply not safe for vehicles to travel through that road work session until the work is complete.”

Regardless of the risk, drivers attempting to take a shortcut would normally not make their journey quicker, she said. “It’s simply not worth it.”

Sinead Ryan, a lead traffic management operative for HW Martin, a contractor, said: “People don’t always realise how dangerous our job can be. We work close to live traffic and, while we can do everything possible to keep ourselves safe, we can’t control the actions of drivers.

“When someone ignores a closure or drives into a work area, it only takes a second for someone to get hurt.”