Why are they called hard shoulders?

Well, they're called hard shoulders because they're not soft ones obviously! Duh! he he he

Or were you heading for the 'because they've got bones in' option? Either way these are the hard ones, bones or tarmac (not the proper name I think it's tarmacadam or something) make them hard.  It's a 'shoulder' because it's the widest outside part, our shoulders are generally the widest part of a body as well & I think that's where they got the name from?

So, hard shoulders are made of gravel & coated in tarmac. Alot of the time, it's not as thick as the main part of the road & is used for access & emergencies rather than driving on. There are survival guides for them & everything, I've learnt today that it's alot better to use one of the emergency phones by the side of the road than a mobile phone. Each emergency phone has it's own personal number & you can be located alot faster using that than saying 'ermmm well I just past a concrete bridge with trees near it'. There are also alot of accidents on hard shoulders. It's always better to be sat well away & watch a huge truck slam into your car, than to actually be sat in your car at the time! Who knew!

You're also meant to leave the door nearest the grass open incase an unsavoury person tries to kidnap you & drag you into the bushes! Apparently, you can run inside & lock the door, screaming at them through a crack in the window (not open fully of course, if you opened it properly & got dragged out through it, you'd deserve everything you got....what do you think this is, some sort of dodgy 80s horror film where the dozy bint's asking for it? I think not!) to fuck off or you'll ram your emergency triangle up their arse (it's rather redundant on the motorway because you're not supposed to use them for any other purpose than ramming them up hard shoulder perverts bottoms). You could always try to call the police on your mobile & tell them your exact location because you wouldn't be near an emergency phone, not forgetting the bit about the bridge with the trees, obviously. This would probably happen right before the big truck slammed into your car. So on the whole, hard shoulders seem rather fun in a 'Basra' kind of way (you see them on TV but wouldn't actually want to visit).

Soft shoulders are missing the tarmac & are generally on smaller, country or old roads. It's the tarmac that makes them hard & little namby pamby roads don't have a need for it apparently. They probably do, but the motorways gang up on them, nick all their tarmac money & make them quake in fear! Bless them.

So to recap: They're called hard shoulders because they have tarmac on them!