Rotherham widow urges police action over smart motorways with digital billboard
Claire Mercer wants Highways England investigated for corporate manslaughter over the death of her husband
A huge digital billboard has been parked outside South Yorkshire Police HQ urging the force to investigate Highways England over smart motorway deaths.
Two coroners have now raised safety concerns about a stretch of the M1 near Sheffield where there's no hard shoulder.
At an inquest into the deaths of Jason Mercer and Alexandru Murgeanu in January coroner David Urpeth said: "I find, as a finding of fact, it is clear a lack of hard shoulder contributed to this tragedy" adding smart motorways "present an ongoing risk of future deaths."
The widow of Jason Mercer, who's from Rotherham, has been campaigning to get smart motorways scrapped ever since his death in 2019.
Today she organised a giant digital billboard to be parked outside South Yorkshire Police's headquarters in Carbrook urging the force to investigate Highways England for corporate manslaughter.
She told us she won't give up her fight:
"It would have been Jason's 46th birthday. It's now been over a year I've been pushing for South Yorkshire Police to investigate Highways England and I thought it'd be a good way to put the two together and make some noise.
"I'm not going to give up and go away. People are dying.
"They've proven that there were five deaths on smart motorways in 2017, there were eleven in 2018 , so it's more than doubled, and there were fifteen in 2019. So that's another fifteen people that could potentially have died in the year we've been waiting for this.
"You can't educate a broken down car into moving. You can't educate and ambulance down four lanes of blocked traffic where seconds matter. We can't do without the hard shoulder."
It comes after last month Doncaster coroner Nicola Mundy referred Highways England to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to consider if corporate manslaughter charges are appropriate in relation to the death of grandmother Nargis Begum, 62, who died on a different stretch of the M1 in September 2018.
South Yorkshire Police (SYP) said in a statement:
"As previously reported, South Yorkshire Police is in the process of obtaining all evidence the coroners had reference to at the inquests into the deaths of Mr Jason Mercer, Mr Alexandru Murgeanu and Mrs Nargis Begum.
"A Senior Investigating Officer has been assigned to this matter, and will be overseeing the review of all the materials obtained. At this time, we have not yet received the evidence from Mr Mercer and Mr Murgeanu's inquest.
"This activity will allow SYP to ascertain whether a crime has been committed, with a view to the possible commencement of criminal proceedings.
"SYP remains in close consultation with the Health and Safety Executive and the Crown Prosecution Services.''
A Highways England spokesman said:
"It would be inappropriate for Highways England to provide comment on the activity of South Yorkshire Police.''