Key takeaways
- National Highways guidance is Go Left, Get Safe, Get Help. An emergency area, lay-by or hard shoulder if you can reach one.
- Get out on the side furthest from traffic, get behind the barrier, and put on high-visibility clothing if you have it.
- If you cannot get out of the car safely, stay in it with your seatbelt on and call 999 and ask for the police.
- Call National Highways on 0300 123 5000, and do not leave an emergency area without speaking to them first.
- A tyre is never fitted on a live carriageway. The car gets somewhere safe first, and the tyre is solved there.
A tyre failing at 70mph on a stretch of motorway with no hard shoulder is the situation every driver has quietly worried about. It is worth knowing the answer in advance, because the useful decisions all happen in the first minute and none of them are improved by working it out at the time.
This post sets out what National Highways itself tells drivers to do. It is deliberately not a tyre article. On a live carriageway the tyre is the least of the problem, and nobody is fitting one there.
What do you do first when a tyre goes with no hard shoulder?
Go left. National Highways structures its guidance as three steps — Go Left, Get Safe, Get Help — and the first is to move into the left lane and pull into an emergency area, a lay-by or onto a hard shoulder if you can reach one. Distance matters less than direction: keeping the car moving to the nearside is what takes you out of the fast-moving lanes.
Emergency areas are the refuges built into stretches without a permanent hard shoulder. They are marked, surfaced differently, and usually signed in advance, which is the reason it is worth glancing at them as you pass on a normal journey rather than looking for one for the first time on a deflating tyre.
Getting out of the car safely
Leave from the side furthest from the traffic and get behind the barrier. National Highways is specific about this: exit the vehicle on the side away from passing vehicles, put on high-visibility clothing if you have it, and get yourself and your passengers behind a safety barrier where one exists. Everyone leaves the car, including passengers who would rather stay warm.
The exceptions matter as much as the rule:
- If you cannot get out safely, do not get out. Stay in the vehicle, keep your seatbelt fastened, put the hazard lights on and call 999 and ask for the police. That is the official instruction for a car stopped where leaving it would be more dangerous than staying.
- Animals stay in the car. A dog loose on a motorway is a second emergency.
- Do not attempt to change a wheel on a live carriageway or in a live lane, whatever the car is fitted with and however capable you are.
Who do you call, and what do you tell them?
Call National Highways on 0300 123 5000, or use the free emergency telephone where one is provided. If your car has an eCall SOS button, pressing it puts you through and sends your position automatically. The thing they need from you is location, and on a motorway there is a purpose-built way of giving it.
| What to give them | Where you find it |
|---|---|
| Driver location sign | Blue sign at the nearside with the road number, direction letter and distance. The single most useful thing you can quote. |
| Marker post number | Small posts along the verge, roughly every 100 metres, carrying numbers and letters. |
| eCall SOS button | In the car, if fitted. Sends position and connects the call for you. |
| Emergency telephone | Where provided. Connects directly and identifies its own location. |
| Junction and direction | The fallback if you have none of the above. Which junction you last passed and which way you are heading. |
National Highways specifically tells drivers to quote the numbers and letters on marker posts or driver location signs. Off the motorway network, what3words is worth having on the phone as well; the company says a large majority of UK emergency services accept a three-word address, though on a motorway the location signs remain the thing to lead with.
Do not leave an emergency area on your own judgement
This is the instruction people are least likely to know. National Highways states that you should not exit an emergency area without speaking to them first. They can set the overhead signs and close a lane to let you rejoin, and pulling out into live traffic from a standing start without that is exactly the manoeuvre the warning exists to prevent.
Which kind of motorway are you actually on?
It changes what is available to you, and most drivers cannot tell the three apart at speed. The distinction is simply whether there is a hard shoulder, whether it is sometimes a running lane, and whether there is one at all. Knowing which you are on tells you what to aim for when something goes wrong.
| Type | What the nearside is | What you aim for |
|---|---|---|
| Conventional motorway | Permanent hard shoulder | The hard shoulder, then behind the barrier. |
| Controlled motorway | Hard shoulder retained, variable speed limits overhead | The hard shoulder, as above. |
| Dynamic hard shoulder | Hard shoulder open to traffic at busy times | An emergency area. The nearside lane may be live. |
| All lane running | No hard shoulder at all; the former one is a permanent lane | An emergency area. There is no refuge between them. |
The practical consequence is that on an all lane running stretch there is no continuous refuge, so the moment a tyre starts to go the decision is how far the next emergency area is and whether the car will reach it. That is the whole reason the guidance leads with going left rather than stopping.
A red X means the lane is closed
If a red X appears above a lane, that lane is closed and you must move out of it. It is frequently displayed precisely because someone is stopped ahead, and driving through one both risks the person stopped there and is an offence. When you are the one stopped, a red X set over your lane is part of what the control room does to protect you, which is why they ask you not to move until you have spoken to them.
When does the tyre become the problem again?
Once the car is somewhere safe and off the network. Until then the sequence is fixed: get to a refuge, get behind the barrier, call National Highways, and let them manage the traffic. A recovery vehicle will move the car to a safe location, and the tyre is dealt with there.
What that means in practice is that a flat on a smart motorway is usually a two-stage job. Stage one belongs to National Highways and the recovery operator. Stage two is the tyre itself, which can be handled wherever the car ends up — a services car park, a lay-by off the network, a side road, or at home the following morning. That second stage is where a mobile fitter is relevant, and not before.
Once the car is somewhere safe we bring the tyre, the fitting machine and the balancer to it, so it does not need to go to a garage. Give us the postcode where the car ended up and the size off the sidewall. Typically 30 to 60 minutes across London and the nearer Home Counties, longer further out, and you get a real arrival time on the call.
If you were recovered to a motorway service area, this covers what happens there. For what a patrol will and will not do about the tyre itself, see breakdown cover versus a mobile fitter, and the pre-journey checks are what reduce the odds of being here at all.
Frequently asked questions
Go left. National Highways guidance is to move to the left lane and reach an emergency area, lay-by or hard shoulder if you can. Then leave the car on the side away from traffic, get behind the barrier, and call National Highways on 0300 123 5000.
Stay in it. National Highways is explicit: if you cannot exit safely, keep your seatbelt on, put the hazard lights on, and call 999 and ask for the police. Getting out into a live lane is more dangerous than remaining in the vehicle.
Quote the driver location sign at the nearside, which carries the road number, a direction letter and a distance. Marker posts along the verge carry numbers and letters too. Both are designed for exactly this and beat any description of your surroundings.
No, and nobody reputable will offer to. A live carriageway is not a place anyone fits a tyre. The car is recovered somewhere safe first, and a fitter comes to it there, which might be a service area, a side road or your home.
It is strongly advised against. Emergency areas sit alongside fast-moving traffic with no barrier between you and it for much of the work. The guidance is to get behind the barrier and call for help rather than work at the roadside.
Because National Highways can set the overhead signs and close a lane so you rejoin safely, and they ask you not to leave without speaking to them first. Pulling out from a standstill into motorway traffic unassisted is the risk that instruction exists to remove.