Rotherham widow vows to 'keep fighting' for return of hard shoulder 7 years after her husband's death
44-year-old Jason Mercer died on the M1 close to Meadowhall back in 2019
A South Yorkshire widow says she'll 'never give up' in her efforts to bring back the hard shoulder on UK motorways.
Claire Mercer's husband - Jason - died on a stretch on smart motorway close to Sheffield exactly 7 years ago today:
"We haven't achieved the one thing that I always said was the only thing I was fighting for.
"That is the return of the hard shoulder on all motorways.
"So, although it's been seven years since Jason's death - and the campaigning has achieved so much - we still haven't achieved the goal of getting the hard shoulder back on motorways.
"We educated the country on what smart motorways were, we got more scrutiny applied to National Highways and smart motorways, and we were part of the reason the government scrapped all new smart motorways - even though we still have to use the existing ones."
The government got rid of plans for all new smart motorway networks 3 years ago in 2023.