It is wrong that people are doing that. Unfortunately we are going to see a lot more of that over the coming years with one crucial difference - it will actually be of the official doing of the Highways Agency. Unless you drive on the M42 or M6 through Birmingham, you won't have yet seen a thing called ATM (Active Traffic Management) where in adition to variable speed limits, like on the M25, when it gets busy the gantries display that the hard shoulder is open as an extra lane, and the HA plan to introduce this over many more sections of motorway over the next 10 years as a cheaper option to proper widening.

The HA say that this is fine as cars don't break down like they used to and laybys are provided every half a mile for anyone who does break down. This ignores the fact that, like is the video above, the hard shoulder provides an easy way for the emergency services to get through in the event of a pile-up.