Oh on the topic of Smart Motorways, we had a VERY near-miss from basically causing a pile-up not long after my wife passed her test. Traffic had stopped dead on the motorway, she didn't notice the car in front wasn't moving until it was too late to stop in time, slammed the brakes hard but there wasn't enough distance... so steered onto the hard shoulder literally just in time. We ended up sat side-by-side with the stopped car like "...hullo"
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But yeah, if there hadn't been a hard shoulder to turn into we would definitely have rear-ended that car.