Highways England’s three key imperatives are to ensure safety, focus on the customer, and deliver the Road Investment Strategy (RIS).  Improving the road network inevitability means more roadworks, posing a challenge for customer satisfaction.  Highways England developed a programme of insight and commissioned Atkins and market research consultancy Accent to consider whether increasing the speed limit through roadworks would improve satisfaction around roadworks’ speed limits without compromising safety.

Research was piloted in the West Midlands, with participants taking a series of journeys on the M5, using dashboard-mounted cameras, Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking, and a heart-rate monitor to track their experience. This combination of telemetric, biometric and visual data was then merged into synchronised footage, creating a detailed insight into each drivers’ behaviour.

The multi-award-winning research has had a national impact and it has been used to support key decisions with regards to changes in policy for the whole Strategic Road Network.