Lawyers want better signs to stop road accidents

Two Welsh personal injury lawyers have launched a campaign to improve road safety by improving signs and layouts at notorious accident blackspots.

The group, Improve Roads Improve Safety (IRIS) is calling on the Welsh government to invest more in road maintenance and improvement to save millions in treating injured motorists.

The campaign is the brainchild of two Cardiff-based personal injury lawyers Eisabeth Roth and Liz Phipps, at New Law, who specialise in cases arising from road accidents, particularly those involving motorcyclists.

Miss Roth said: “Liz and I spend our time working with serious and life-changing injuries caused by road accidents, and in investigating them we often find that poor or badly marked roads were the cause.

“Our team deals with more than 20,000 road accidents each year. You can’t be involved day after day in helping that many families try to put their lives back together without becoming involved and trying to do something to prevent such catastrophes occurring.”

The campaign follows the death of teenagers Jade Emanuel and Rhiannon Davies in 2008 who died on a stretch of the A465 at Hirwaun when their car aquaplaned on standing water in the road.

Just a few months earlier another driver was injured in an almost identical accident on the same stretch of road.

Miss Roth said: “We need to begin concentrating on where accidents happen and target how we spend money on road maintenance to get the best possible outcome.

“There’s a road in Carmarthenshire which was a well-known accident blackspot but it has become much safer by changing the signage and prohibiting the old layout of two lanes in one direction, to allow overtaking and one lane in the other direction but with nothing between."