Reminds me of this great response a few years back, in response to the 'My Daddy Works Here' campaign to get driver to drive slow through roadworks. Fair play though, working on the motorways can't be easy especially with the UK's weather.
As to whether smart motorways are the answer, I have my doubts, unless the question is how can we boost revenues. A few times I've been driving on them at night, barely a car on the road, but the signs are saying 60. They say its because they have viability over incidents ahead and are slowing things down, but all it takes is changing those speed limit signs a few times and the cameras are already connected and ready to go, apparently you get 2 mins from when a sign changes to camera enforcing the new limit. Just in time for the Crimbo police party too.
I admit the ones I use are more informative than the old sign in the middle of the carriage which usually turns out to be misleading anyway (incident ahead... 50... drive through it with no evidence of anything), but my journey times are longer and even my employers are getting frustrated now by this, and they always proclaim safety first but it means productivity suffers, perhaps needlessly. A four hour journey takes me 6, then when I get back I'm not about to fire up the laptop at my family's expense. But that is thanks to a mix of traffic incidents predictably regularly, higher volume of traffic, truck drivers playing snail racing and flexible speed limits which keep you guessing on journey times.
Plus, when the head of the RAC is fighting against smart motorways on the basis that he doesn't want to have to deal with another of his workers who was on the phone to a broken down driver in the hard shoulder that had become a 4th lane temporarily, when the line went dead, then you have to question it on a different scale.
