Action at last on triple death road

The Highways Agency has told town MP Greg Barker that it will install a permanent speed camera this Autumn and a safety barrier during the current financial year.

The Observer mounted its campaigning in March last year after the horrific crash in which a 25-year-old driver was killed and a family trapped in the wreckage of their home.

The accident happened after a high-powered sports coupe left the dual carriageway A259 on a right-hand curve at an estimated 88mph and plunged down an embankment into the flats below.

This accident closely followed a crash at the same spot where the 40mph limit becomes 30mph when a woman motorist was killed as her car ploughed into vehicles parked in layby.

The MP immediately took up the Observer's campaign for better safety measures, making a fact-finding visit to the scene and requesting a site visit with representatives of the Highways Agency and its then trunk road contractors.

Mr Barker led a delegation to the London office of the Minister of Transport, Tony McNulty last December at which the Observer presented a file detailing the catalogue of accidents.

But within a year there had been a further death.

The same stretch of road was the scene of a third tragedy in March this year when a 23-year-old motorcyclist from Tunbridge Wells was killed when his machine crossed the central reservation and he was catapulted into a lamp post.

Another motorcyclist was lucky to escape with his life when in April 2002 his machine skidded across from the westbound carriageway into the eastbound and struck a wall. The rider told rescuers he had been doing 140mph before losing control.

Now the Highways Agency's Area 4 Traffic Operations Directorate has written to the MP stating: "...you will be pleased to know that there is to be a fixed camera installed at King Offa Way this October.

"Subject to the final design, we also hope to construct the new safety barrier this financial year."

Mr Barker told the Observer: "I am pleased and relieved that we at last appear to be getting the improvements that, along with the Bexhill Observer, I have been pushing for more than 12 months.

"However, they are still not in place yet and I will be keeping a careful watch to make sure that these essential road safety improvements are kept on track."

Rother leader Cllr Graham Gubby, who accompanied the MP and the Observer in tackling the Transport Minister said: "My immediate reaction is 'Not before time and at what cost to life and the tragic circumstances for the families of people who have had accidents on that road.'

"Let us hope nothing else happens they get installed."

He said a strong message had to go out to the motoring public that such measures were not "anti-car" but that a genuine effort had to be made to eliminate irresponsible behaviour on the road and to promote safe driving.