Since the Mt. Blanc fire, evacuation shelters have been debated as a means for road user safety, and due to the EU directive, they generally have not been built in Norway. One exception is the Oslofjord road tunnel, which experienced a serious fire in 2011. Nine road users were trapped in the smoke. Based on instructions from operators at the Tunnel Control Center (TCC), some of them took shelter behind the tunnel walls that were not designed to protect people in the case of fire. Several people were injured in the fire, but no one died. After the fire it was decided to establish evacuation shelters in the tunnel, as a temporary measure until a second tube was built. The second tube is still not built, and several fires have occurred in the Oslofjord tunnel since 2011. During an HGV fire in 2017 the drivers of two separate HGVs became trapped in the smoke and evacuated into one of these evacuation shelters. They only sustained minor injuries. In this paper we investigate the foundation for the prohibition of evacuation shelters in road tunnels. A review of important historical fires, application of similar shelters in other industries, as well as a theoretical review of tunnel users’ behavior in emergencies, supports a discussion of how evacuation shelters might be included as an element in road tunnels’ evacuation systems. We conclude that evacuation shelters could provide a cost-effective solution to a major challenge of enhancing the self-rescue principle in many Norwegian single-tube road tunnels.