A Leighton road that was named and shamed as the most dangerous in the East of England has been given a radical overhaul by safety experts in a bid to cut down on the number of accidents along its stretch.
The A4012, Leighton to Hockliffe stretch, has been highlighted in an annual report from the Road Safety Foundation, a watchdog that highlights the condition of the nation’s roads.
The five mile length of road has been the scene of ten fatal or serious accidents (an increase of 25 per cent) between 2006-10, which are the latest statistics available. More than half of the incidents (52 per cent) were run-offs where vehicles had left the carriageway. Central Beds Council say the actual figures were eight serious accidents, and five slight injury collisions.
But since 2010 Central Beds Council has gone to work improving road safety with new signage.
Spokesman Councillor Budge Wells said: “The Road Safety Foundation map is not current. As a council we take the safety of our residents and road users very seriously indeed and so, as we do every year, the collisions on this stretch of road were highlighted as part of our review of collision sites in 2010.
“In the case of the A4012 review, we included the length of carriageway in our 2011/12 road safety programme as a route treatment site. We put up additional chevron signs at some of the bends, replaced old signage with more visible yellow backed signs, added verge marker posts, laid some enhanced road studs and cut back roadside shrubs. All these improvements were made after analysing collision data to determine the most effective ways to make the route safer.
“We are pleased to see that the improvements seem to be working already. Since completion of the works in 2011 there has been just one recorded serious injury collision last year and no slight injury collisions. Although this is too soon to be indicative of any trend, we hope that the improvements we have made will continue to make a difference on this stretch of road.
“Of course, we continue to closely monitor collision sites and clusters of sites, undertake an annual programme of works targeted at these and run a programme of road safety education training and publicity to target driver behaviour.”