SO drivers now face six penalty points and a £200 fine if they’re caught using their mobiles while driving.

Fair enough. There’s enough evidence to show the practice is dangerous and can have fatal consequences. But I wonder whether Highways England will also be penalised if – or when – its actions cause the death of an innocent motorist.

I’m talking about its growing network of ‘smart motorways’, in particular the removal of the traditional hard shoulder to create a fourth lane.

A section of the M1 south of Sheffield became a smart motorway last year. I drove along it the other night. It was filthy weather, with spray everywhere and terrible visibility, but I reflected that at least the traffic was moving along nicely.

But then I pondered the - frankly terrifying - prospect of breaking down without a hard shoulder.

If I ran out of fuel, suffered a tyre blow-out, or an electrical fault, or an engine fire, or was taken ill, I had to somehow make it to an Emergency Refuge Area layby.

Otherwise, I’d come to a halt in the inside lane, with lorries bearing down on me from behind at God knows what speed. For long sections, barriers at the side of the road would even prevent me escaping on to the verge.

I was comforted by the thought that while my little Kia Picanto is 12 years old, it is incredibly reliable. But I once had an old Vauxhall Cavalier, which appeared to run well until one day I was driving down the M1 and it started raining hard.

York Press:

A section of 'smart' motorway with the hard shoulder acting as a fourth lane

The spray seemed to get in the engine, it cut out and I just managed to make it to the hard shoulder. But I shudder to think what would have happened if there hadn’t been one.

I’m not the only one with such concerns. An AA survey last year showed that eight out of ten drivers believed motorists were being placed at increased risk by the growing disappearance of the hard shoulder.

AA president Edmund King said: “Breaking down in a live running lane with trucks thundering up behind you is every driver’s worst nightmare.”

The AA said current rules demanded that refuge areas should no more than 2.6km apart, but the organisation wanted much shorter distance through the creation of at least twice as many lay-bys.

So what is Highways England playing at?

Well, it seems to me it is trying to solve the problem of growing motorway congestion on the cheap.

Its own website admits: “Smart motorways mean increased road capacity faster and at less cost than traditional road widening schemes.”

But it goes on to claim, rather bafflingly, that they are just as safe as traditional motorways, and often safer.

An analysis of data after its first smart motorway scheme opened on the M42 in 2006 apparently showed that personal injury accidents reduced by more than half and where they did occur, the severity was much lower overall.

Industry experts have also claimed that hard shoulders ‘represent a perception of safety that is greater than the reality,’ with more than 1,500 people killed or injured every year on them and research indicating that in the large majority of cases, where there is no hard shoulder available, drivers are able to push on and reach the nearest lay-by.

Highways England also says that once the regional traffic control centre is aware of motorists stuck on the inside lane, via the police or roadside technology such as CCTV, they can use the smart motorway technology to set overhead signs and close the lane to help keep traffic away from them, and will also send a traffic officer or police to help.

But I remain worried about what happens until the authorities swing into action.

And I think that if smart motorways are here to stay, there should, as the AA has argued, be many more emergency refuges. Otherwise, these revamped motorways will be more dumb than smart.