Readers of The Westmorland Gazette are being given an opportunity to help steer a police drive to reduce the number of casualties on a notorious trunk road which links South Lakeland with Furness.

Police have started an information gathering exercise and enlisted the help of the paper to seek out the views of people who use the A590 on a regular basis to discover what can be done to try to make the road safer, writes Mike Addison.

The road has claimed 74 lives in the past 18 years and hundreds of people have been injured in accidents along its length from Levens to Barrow.

South Lakeland's traffic management officer Roger Mallett told the Gazette the consultation exercise had arisen as part of the police's casualty reduction strategy and followed two serious accidents on the road earlier this year that resulted in the deaths of four people.

"We are consulting the public and users of the road to find out what they feel is the main problem with the A590 and how Cumbria Constabulary can address those problems," said Mr Mallett. "Everybody has a different view as to what the problems are and anecdotal evidence over the years gives numerous reasons for the collisions."

The Westmorland Gazette is carrying a cut-out questionnaire prepared by the police and readers are invited to spend a few minutes filling it out. Readers are also being urged to write in (wgnewsdesk@kendal.newsquest.co.uk)and their responses will be considered for inclusion on the Letters page of the paper and passed on to the police.

"It's to find out if there are any other problems that we have not considered that will help us reduce problems on the A590," said Mr Mallett. "After we have assessed the responses then we will look to address the problems that have been highlighted."

Traffic officers have already set in motion a number of initiatives to clamp down on law breaking motorists, including blitzing the road with safety cameras and employing unmarked video cars to catch speeding and aggressive drivers. They are also about to start a drink-driving campaign focused on the road which will run from May 26 to June 1.

"We don't think the road is dangerous and we consider the main causation factor of collisions is driver error," said Mr Mallett.

The police's casualty reduction strategy has arisen because the Government has set a target to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured on South Lakeland's roads by 40 per cent by 2010.

May 22, 2003 15:30