Grieving relatives of a grandmother killed on a stretch of the M1 with no hard shoulder have branded the smart motorway system ‘dangerous and flawed’.
Nargis Begum, 62, was travelling in a Nissan Qashqai driven by her husband, Mohammed Bashir, which broke down near Woodall Services in South Yorkshire on September 9, 2018.
The mother-of-five got out of the car and had been waiting for help when a Mercedes collided with the Nissan, causing it to plough into her.
Mr Bashir, 69, described the sound of the ‘horrendous impact’ after stopping on what he thought was the hard shoulder – but turned out to be a live lane.
He then saw his wife lying on the ground, an inquest at Doncaster Coroner’s Court heard on Tuesday.
‘I don’t want to describe what I saw as it is still too upsetting,’ Mr Bashir said in a statement.
He told police he had been ‘unaware of any changes to the Highway Code or the fact that the motorway had changed to a smart version’.
The couple had been driving from Derby to their home in Darnall, Sheffield, when their car ‘suddenly’ dropped speed.
Mr Bashir, a taxi driver, put his hazard warning lights on and climbed over the barrier – but his wife could not get over as it was too high, the hearing was told.
Their daughter Saima Aktar, 40, loaned them the car, which arthritis-sufferer Mrs Begum preferred because it had more space.
Ms Aktar was on her way to collect her parents after her father informed her the car had stopped.
But before she arrived at the scene, Mr Bashir called to tell her: ‘Sweetheart, the situation changed, there’s been an accident and your mum has been hurt.’
The accident has left the family ‘broken’, Ms Aktar said – but added: ‘we are united in not wanting this to happen to another family.
‘We all believe the smart motorway system is dangerous and flawed – if there had been a hard shoulder my dad would have ended up there.’
She paid tribute to her mother, who moved to the UK from Pakistan in the mid-1970s, as ‘the most caring, loving and selfless person I knew’ and ‘the best mum in the world’.
‘Losing our mother is the most painful and difficult thing we have ever experienced in our lives,’ Ms Akhtar said.
‘To have her taken away from us the way she was has been immensely traumatic for each and every one of us.’
The Mercedes driver, Kantrimas Zukauskas, was initially arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving, the hearing was told.
He refused to give evidence at the inquest but a transcript of his police interviews revealed he said: ‘I just don’t know how I did it, that’s all.
‘If I hit it, I didn’t see it.’
Another motorist, Mark Sheriff, recalled a car behind him ‘coming at a speed – about 90mph’ before describing an ‘almighty smash’.
‘There was debris all over the road,’ he said.
Senior coroner Nicola Mundy last year asked South Yorkshire Police to consider whether Highways England should face corporate manslaughter charges over Mrs Begum’s death.
In February, the force said the organisation, now renamed National Highways, will not be charged after Crown Prosecution Service advice that it did not owe road users a ‘relevant duty of care’ under the terms set out in the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007.
The inquest is being held days after new Prime Minister Liz Truss vowed to stop smart motorways, labelling them a failed ‘experiment’.
The roll-out of smart motorways was halted earlier this year due to safety concerns, the government announced.
Official figures published last year revealed the death rate on smart motorways is up to a third higher compared with highways that have hard shoulders.
South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner, Dr Alan Billings, said smart motorways were ‘inherently unsafe and dangerous’ and called for them to be abandoned.
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