Victims’ relatives demand action over horror junction

Calls for action over stretch of road that has claimed 7 lives in the last few months

Mr Harry Goddard, the father of one of the young men killed in the tragic car crash on the A4, has spoken out in anger over the amount of deaths on that particular stretch of road and lack of action taken by the authorities to make it safer. He has joined forces with the relatives and friends of the other young fathers who died in a campaign to force transport authorities to take action over the road that has claimed seven lives in the last five months.

The latest victims were killed after their Saab Convertible crashed into a road sign on the westbound stretch of the A4 just past Chiswick roundabout on Sunday March 2nd.

Mr Goddard now wants action taken by Transport for London who are responsible for this stretch of the A4. He said “So many people have died on this spot and what the hell is going on? You come out of the roundabout and it's two lanes then three lanes, then all these signs. Then the junction with the intersection with the M4 is filthy with articulated lorries thundering past. If people leave the road surface they're going to hit something hard. There're no barriers there to stop them.'' He claimed the police knew about the problem but were powerless to do anything and that TfL had rejected the idea of barriers as this would mean reducing the number of lanes.

“No doubt there will be reasons why this accident happened. And the engineers will come out and say it's not possible to put up barriers for whatever reason'' he added “but it seems to me that TfL are putting traffic flow before people's lives.''

Sergeant Diane Francis of the Collision Investigation Unit at Hampton said an investigation into road design was already underway: She agreed that there was no doubt there had been an unusually high number of deaths on that road and said that the Traffic Management Unit was working with TfL to see what can be done, but work is still in the very early stages.'

She added police were still appealing for witnesses to the crash on March 2nd, and a date has still to be set for an inquest.

Four months ago, teenager Vannessa Cavanagh and her boyfriend Derrick Perry were killed on the same stretch of road, when their car careered into a concrete pillar supporting the M4, just two weeks after two men from Hounslow, Tarlochan Singh Parmar, and Harminder Sekhon also lost their lives after hitting one of the support pillars.


March 15, 2003

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Three dead in Chiswick road crash