A262/ A45 Britain's Killer Roads

Last year, almost 1,900 people were killed on Britain's roads.

It was just like the end of your world.

And it's not always the motorist that's to blame.

She would have been alive if there had been barriers there.

Today we expose these killer roads and ask if enough's being done to prevent more needless deaths.

To stop any other mam or dad walk into a hospital

and having to identify their son.

Welcome to Kent, often known as the Garden Of England.

A beautiful county, but also one of the country's busiest.

Sandwiched between London and the south coast ports,

the little Kent country roads are getting busier and busier.

Like this one, the A262. Now, it should be a nice quiet route

going through the picturesque village of Goudhurst.

But with the amount of traffic this route now gets,

it's become a problem A-road.

Set in the southeast of England,

the A262 runs for 14 miles through the beautiful Kent countryside,

taking in a number of villages along the way.

There's a section of it, though,

that's been highlighted in a recent report

as higher risk than comparable UK roads.

It's a seven-mile stretch, running from the junction with the A21,

to the junction with the A229.

It's used by an average of 8,000 vehicles each day,

and between 2004 and 2009

there were 25 people killed or seriously injured on this road.

Kent County Council didn't respond to our request for a breakdown of these figures.

In October 2007, Katie Mitchell was killed in a motorbike collision

at a notorious junction near Goudhurst.

Katie, a police constable, was on her way to work.

As she neared the Chequers Inn junction,

she lost control of her bike and was thrown into the oncoming traffic.

Her parents Jackie and Peter lost their only child that day.

Jackie, thank you for agreeing to meet me.

I know this isn't an easy thing to talk through at all.

Going back to that October, what do you remember from that morning?

When did you first hear some news filtering through?

I was sitting on a coach going to the Paddock Wood Hop Farm

and I had a phone call from Kent Police,

and straightaway I seemed to know that something was wrong,

cos he said that he'd been to our home here in Ashford

and there was no-one in.

He'd been trying to locate me all the morning.

He said, "Well, when you get to your destination

"could you stay in the coach? We need to come and find you."

What did they tell you had happened that morning?

He just said that there'd been a fatality that morning

and it was on the Goudhurst Road junction,

and, unfortunately, Katie had died.

It just, sort of... It hadn't really registered,

but you knew that it was just like the end of your world, really.

That morning, she was riding a motorcycle,

-she was coming into Goudhurst, wasn't she?

-Yes.

What do you understand happened at that point?

She was riding along, approaching the Chequers public house junction.

All of a sudden, she realised the traffic was closing.

We've been told she braked very hard,

which meant she lost control of her bike

and the bike threw her and she fell under the oncoming traffic.

They would have seen her in the road at the last minute,

and too late to do anything about it.

But if she hadn't fell under the car, she would have survived the crash

because she wasn't going that fast to have hurt herself.

Do you believe, from what you've been through, that some roads are more dangerous than others?

-Do you think this is a dangerous junction?

-Oh, I do.

It's a very dangerous junction.

I think on this particular road, a lot does happen.

Something's got to be done to widen the road,

just to make it more visible

for oncoming traffic turning out of the junction.

This journey would have formed part of her every-day commute.

-She knew the road.

-Every day, different times of the year.

She knew the road well and she was an experienced driver.

She wasn't speeding, or doing anything other than she would normally do,

probably every other day.

We lived and worked all our lives to make her life better for her.

She was a very intelligent girl. She just loved life and everything.

Her job was in the police. She was enjoying her role

as an intelligence officer, is that right?

Yes, in the Intelligence Unit in West Kent at Tonbridge.

She did things for charity.

I mean, she would abseil and things to raise money.

She worked for the Wildlife Foundation,

which we being patrons of now,

we help them any time we can, and we do it, like today, in memory of her

because we have no future with her, because of this road.

Since Katie's death, the council has made some improvements to the junction.

They've installed a high-friction road surface and improved road markings,

but visibility is still very restricted.

I want to find out more about the Chequers Inn junction

to try and understand how Katie's accident could have happened,

so I'm meeting PC Tim Moody

to hear why he thinks there are so many RTCs,

or Road Traffic Collisions, at this spot.

Is this a renowned junction?

This does seem to stand out as a problem place.

Yes, as a local officer, if I hear of an RTC on the A226,

my immediate thought is it's going to be this junction.

If it's a serious accident, then it's going to be on this junction.

What is it with this junction?

Why does it cause so many problems?

There are several issues with it, really. One is its location.

We've got a long straight piece of road, 30mph signs.

National speed limit beginning just up the road.

Long, straight road through the village,

and then you've got a junction in the middle,

with extremely restrictive visibility.

People coming out of the village, what sort of speeds are they doing?

-What zone are we in here?

-It's a 30mph limit here.

The national speed limit starts probably about another 150 yards down the road.

We regularly do speed checks along here

and we've had about 45mph along here.

How serious are the accidents that can and have happened here?

We have had fatalities. We've had a number of fatalities here.

So actually there is a strong argument here for more being done, isn't there?

Yes. As I say, anything that could even save one life,

saves one family being destroyed.

Anything that can be done is going to be worth doing.

The Chequers Inn junction on the east side of Goudhurst is notorious amongst locals,

but the road to the west of the village is just as infamous.

There are a series of tight corners in a 40mph zone known as The Bends,

which have seen countless accidents over the years.

Residents believe it's only matter of time before one of these crashes results in a death.

I want to get a better understanding of all the problems on this stretch,

so I've decided to see the road for myself.

Here we are. I'm on the A262.

I'm heading west and ahead of me is the village of Goudhurst.

This is a real problem spot.

There's been quite a few bad accidents on this road,

with people trying to come out and turn right onto this road.

That pub right there seems to block the sightlines.

And now, here's the other problem spot.

A lovely old church to the left and churchyard

and the road just snakes around it

and you get this kind of, almost a right angle.

You get big trucks like that one just there, coming round here

causing real back-ups and there are cars absolutely everywhere.

It's OK where its wide enough, but some bits get a bit narrow,

like here, to have all these cars sticking out.

Lots of concealed entrances along the edge of the road

and the plants are flourishing, so you can't see them to your right,

so you have to take it really carefully

and keep an eye out for anyone pulling out of their drive.

This is The Bends as you come out. We've come down the hill.

These are all on a gradient and its asking me to reduce speed,

quite rightly, and this is quite a steep bend.

You have to be actually going reasonably slowly,

certainly no faster than 40.

Probably quite a bit slower because this is a bit

where quite a few people have come off the road, they've gone into hedges,

into a garage there, so there's clearly a bit of a problem with the road there

and people being able to stay in control of their vehicles.

You come out and you hit the national speed limit.

It's still quite winding, this is very narrow.

The road surface is a bit patchy here. A few potholes.

Still some large trucks but this is back on an open route,

We've left the village behind us.

Having driven the whole route,

I now want to find out more about The Bends

on the west side of Goudhurst.

So I'm visiting Robert Sergeant, who runs a local business.

He's been concerned about the safety of this stretch for a number of years.

-Hello, Rob, I'm Joe, how are you?

-Hello there, nice to meet you.

Good to see you. I love these cars. Is this your garage?

-Yes, it's a family business.

-Talk to me about this road.

-What have you noticed? This is The Bends...

-Yes, this sequence of bends

past the garage here has been a problem for a number of years.

Both ways, it's traffic coming into the village

as well as coming out of the village so, yes,

you've got a nice straight, a bit of speed that way, but you also come down the hill from this way,

so either way it tends to catch people out, really.

And what's happening?

-Are they actually coming off the road in some cases?

-Yes, oh, yes.

Quite severely sometimes.

There's walls hit and fences taken out,

signs and right through into the pub car park

and all the way down the road. It's either one side or the other.

-Has any come up on this forecourt?

-Oh, yes.

Our main pole sign was taken out a couple of years ago and had to be totally replaced.

The sign on the end there seems to be taking the punishment at the moment.

We've had two recently take out the sign

and one actually ended up upside down in the middle of the driveway there.

-I know you've been keeping a log, or you did.

-Yes, we kept a log for the year of '08.

We actually had 13 accidents in the year.

After badgering the council, they went back to the official records

and found there wasn't that many accidents.

So really, they weren't being recorded,

so we kept a log of the accidents, the directions

of the vehicles coming and going and we also took photographs

-of as many of the accidents as possible.

-You've actually got a map.

-You've got them pinpointed on here.

-Yes, on The Bends right here.

There's a scattering, but it does seem to cluster around the bends, doesn't it?

Yes, yes. Definitely.

And how serious are some of these?

There's a few where we felt the vehicle had been written off.

You've got "write off, write off, write off",

-That's a write-off as well?

-Both.

The Land Rover was upside down and the roof was cut off the other car.

We guessed they're probably written off.

That's pretty significant.

We feel, as a community,

we're worried until somebody, one of us is hurt even,

nothing will be done.

'Robert has even taken matters into his own hands,

'replanting numerous reflective posts he's found beside the road.'

Doesn't it frustrate you that, not only are the road markings really poor,

-but you're the one having to plant in some of the reflectors?

-The plastic bollards.

Yes, it is frustrating but if we don't do it, I fear we'll have more accidents

and we don't want that either.

We've had an interactive sign put in, which doesn't make a lot of difference.

It would be nice to get some improvement on the surface

but it's always down to funding.

'I'm keen to hear what an industry expert has to say about the A262,

'so I've invited a road engineer

'with 35 years' professional experience to take a look.'

My first reaction is the lanes are fairly narrow

and we've got these aggressive objects quite close to the road edge,

trees and hedges. The road quality is surprisingly poor.

Now we're coming into a 30mph speed limit.

A very sharp change from 60 to 30 with not much of a warning.

What is that junction on the right?

That looks really quite aggressive.

Well here we have clear road markers to mark this bend ahead.

Clearly something's happened here.

And we've got a lot going on. Pubs and garages and sharp

to moderately sharp bends.

This is obviously a bit of a zone on the road.

There's a safety fence. That's the first one of those we've seen.

Immediately into another bend with the road condition deteriorating,

the roadside environment deteriorating very rapidly.

The road condition is really dreadful.

It's difficult to see why we can't have wider road at this point at all.

Oh, dear.

Look at the way the road patching has been just left like this.

If you were a motorcyclist, this would be truly dreadful.

Come off the road at this speed and hit one of those trees, you'll be dead.

This is not a road that you should really expect to be safe at 60mph.

It is too narrow, there are aggressive objects left and right

and a lot of the junctions have not been laid out

for the speed of the road. This road really is not right.

The A262 did not show the signs of a road

which was being well looked after in the light of a known high casualty rate.

And it's really not what we should expect in 21st-century Britain.

'So John Dawson's concerns are...

'We'll return to the A262 later

'and hear what a road-markings expert has to say about the road.'

I drive many, many miles a year

and I think this is probably one of the worst roads I have seen.

There are many problems here still waiting to be addressed.

Dangerous bends, poor sight lines, faded road markings.

But it doesn't always have to be that way.

There are many problem roads across the UK

that have been turned around with dramatic results,

like the A45, just south of Dunchurch.

The A45 runs for 80 miles through the heart of the Midlands,

from Birmingham into Northamptonshire.

The majority of the road is single carriageway

and there's a section that was a source of public outrage for over a decade.

Just south of Dunchurch is a three-mile section of the A45

that became the focal point for local efforts to get the road improved.

On this one short stretch,

there were 27 accidents resulting in injury,

including 11 serious injuries and seven deaths in just five years.

In January 2003, Mark Teagles was on his way to work

when he was involved in a serious accident on this stretch of the A45.

We heard on the radio there'd been an accident

and assumed given the time that it happened

that Mark should've been long gone and at work and didn't think any more of it,

just carried on as normal

until we'd the phone call from his mum to say, actually,

it had been Mark involved in the accident and he was in hospital.

Mark had been travelling south from Dunchurch on his motorbike

when he struck an oncoming vehicle.

He was thrown from his bike.

The initial prognosis was he'd suffered two broken legs.

We then received another phone call to say

things were more serious than they thought they were at first

and that he would be going into theatre

and we should really get over.

When we arrived, he had died in theatre from internal injuries.

He was just a normal lad on his way to work.

He wasn't going out to push the bike to silly speeds.

That wasn't the plan. He was just on his way to work.

We'd been married for about 15 months when it happened.

He was 23, it happened just before his 24th birthday. Um...

And when it happened, Shannon was a tiny baby, only 12 weeks old.

There wasn't really any time to grieve properly.

I had to be there for Shannon. I'd got a baby to deal with on top of everything else,

so to me, I just carried on.

There's nothing you can do to make it better. Nothing's going to bring him back.

You just have to keep going, keep plodding through it.

That was pretty much how we spent the first few weeks and months,

all of us. As far as it went we were a happy little family unit before it all...

went wrong.

At first, Emma put Mark's death down to a tragic mistake.

But when there was another death at exactly the same point

just eight months later, she started to look more closely at the road.

I didn't realise at the time

when it happened, quite how serious a problem there was down there.

Afterwards, we noticed there was more flowers being laid,

more incidents happening and it started to click into my head

that perhaps it wasn't just driver error on that particular day. Perhaps there was more to it.

As you start to dig deeper, we noticed there had been

a number of collisions over a number of years.

I think the problems with the road is people seeing it

as being a road you can drive down particularly fast.

The corner where it happened,

the visibility down there can be quite poor due to the hedges.

At the time of the accident, they're not sure

whether drainage could be an issue as well.

Emma believed there was an issue with drivers

losing control on the road and that the key factors were...

She began to push for something to be done.

These calls initially proved unsuccessful.

But another death on the road in 2005,

followed by three more in 2006

brought this stretch of the A45 right to the forefront of people's attention.

A meeting to discuss the safety concerns regarding the road

was held within weeks of the latest deaths in September 2006.

The meeting was chaired by Gordon Collett, a county councillor

who'd lobbied for improvements along the road for years.

The number of people that were concerned about this problem

far exceeded the number of people living in the village,

because it's not a big village.

Senior members of the offices of the Highway Authority

and the county council at that meeting turned up.

I think they were overwhelmed by the public response to the call for the meeting.

Emma was there and others were there from villages over the border in Northamptonshire.

She spoke at that meeting at some length.

You couldn't help but be moved by her personal circumstance.

There was a representative from Warwickshire County Council,

who was obviously putting their side across and the fact of how much money it was going to cost.

The council stated there had not been enough incidents

to automatically prompt action that could cost as much as £60,000.

It just felt as if they didn't care, if I'm honest.

That they didn't care that more people could die there

for the sake of what is a slice of a budget.

It wasn't the greatest of evenings, but it made me push on further,

made me really want to make a difference.

I suppose I made a nuisance of myself, and I'm sure by the end of it

they were glad it was over but I felt you have to push it,

you have to keep on at them... You don't want a letter just stuffed in a drawer.

I spent a lot of time with local press.

I figured if I could get the information out there, make people

more aware of what was happening on the road and what was happening

from the council's point of view, I could get more support that way.

I arranged a petition to be put around in

the local businesses between Daventry and Dunchurch,

which is the stretch it happened on.

Basically, it was just a case of printing them off and actually going to people

and I think it was a key thing in making the changes.

It showed that there was a lot of local feeling about what was happening.

It wasn't just a case of me as a grieving person

trying to do something, a lot of people felt that way.

Emma worked a miracle with the petition.

I forget now how many names she got on it, but it was massive,

from a sparsely populated area, really.

We basically had a day out. We took it to the Shire Hall

and handed it in and just hoped to hear for the best, really.

I think that happened around early November time.

The petition had the desired effect.

Within a matter of weeks,

Emma received a reply from the council with encouraging news.

We received a letter saying that, actually, they were looking into

the things we'd suggested

and it was just a case of working out how feasible things were to do

so I felt that was a real positive start to the whole thing.

It was a real comprehensive review of that particular stretch of road

and drawing on the resources of other groups

and trying to make a five-star route.

It was the number of fatals,

severities and serious accidents we'd get along that stretch of road.

Certainly the community played a large part

in trying to get something done about it.

The review highlighted a number of factors that caused accidents

on this stretch, and put forward three options for consideration,

all of which involved lowering the speed limit.

Finally, in July 2008, nearly two years after she'd first received the letter from the council,

Emma's tireless campaigning in the memory of her husband

brought about a major undertaking from the county council.

They agreed to carry out extensive work

centred on speed reduction on the A45,

a huge victory for the campaign.

It was a 60mph road. We duly set about looking at doing a 50mph road.

Moreover, it's trying to prevent the instances of overtaking

which was a factor in the number of accidents.

We set about putting in engineering measures,

namely the hatch markings, to try and deter overtaking.

But moreover, to put up what we would refer to as route aware signs,

where drivers are drip fed information about the route and why the limit is lower.

This looks at casualties and the number of accidents, particularly fatal and serious accidents.

We also did a publicity campaign centred on the route aware programme

that we operate through the county council.

Education plays a very key part in terms of tackling road safety.

And education is just as important as doing engineering works

in trying to get the message across about the route, the problems,

what you can do about it to prevent yourselves and your occupants getting injured.

The A45 these days is a pleasure to drive down.

The volume of traffic is the same.

But by and large, 50's stuck to

and I think the evidence is there to prove it.

I don't think there's been a fatality there since this has happened.

There's been one or two shunts but nothing serious.

The results for the A45 are extremely encouraging.

In the last two years, we've had nobody killed or seriously injured

and accidents have fallen in excess of 45%, with about 60% reduction in casualties

so we're extremely encouraged that the works are having a benefit to the safety of that road.

The county council also acknowledged the vital role that Emma played

in highlighting the issue and prompting them to take action.

Emma's actions, her commitment, certainly played a large part

in getting elected members interested in the problem, first of all.

Not only that, getting public money put into the scheme.

I think without Emma's input, perhaps the scheme would have been somewhat delayed

and who knows what would have happened in the meantime.

It wasn't a particularly fast process and it took some time

after Mark had died to realise that this was what I wanted to do,

but I think, actually, it's a good feeling.

Even though it's not going to bring Mark back, it's not going to take that away,

to know it's not going to happen to anybody else...

That's a good feeling, to know that I made a difference.

And the fact that I pushed it and I've hopefully helped other people.

It does make you feel good.

I found as many of the bits and pieces to do with what we were trying to achieve,

the newspaper cuttings and the letters, and I wanted to keep them.

I wanted to show Shannon, when she's older and grown-up enough to understand,

that we did try to make things different.

It gives her something to be proud of.

Something good has come out of everything that she's lost.

We just can't believe we've survived in ourselves as a couple

and we're coming up to her fourth anniversary now and it doesn't get any easier.

Life is very hard. Although we do things and we go to places,

we go to places where we used to go with Katie, that she enjoyed,

and it brings back memories.

But we live for the memory of Katie.

Katie Mitchell was killed in a motorbike collision in 2007

at the Chequers Inn junction on the A262 in Kent.

Just down the road, local residents live in fear of a stretch known as The Bends,

as restaurant owner Lou explains.

We've lost so many gateposts, cars turned upside down,

smashed into the hedge... It's just unbelievable.

Why should we have two put up with all this? I don't know.

Every time we walk through our car park,

you are conscious that somebody may come down the road

and smash into you or approach you at high speed,

and you're thinking, what am I going to do then? I don't know.

Between the two accident black spots of the Chequers Inn junction and the bends

lies the village of Goudhurst.

But pedestrians who want to walk into or around the village

do so at great peril.

Paul Simmons knows the dangers all too well.

He recalls how he was injured just outside his home

while out walking with his wife.

It was January, Heather and I were out for a country walk.

We'd not lived here very long. Walking down the 262,

Heather was on the grass verge, I was inside the white line.

Next minute, clunk, I was hit by a car,

knocked of the wing mirror clean off, car carried on.

I had to chase after the car for the car to stop.

I could feel that my arm was broken as it had started throbbing.

Phoned 999 and a police car came to the scene...

..and an ambulance and they took me off to Kent and Sussex

and it was nine weeks off work that I didn't really need.

As a painter and decorator, it was my toolkit broken.

Paul escaped his collision with just a broken arm

but local residents feel it's merely a matter of time before a pedestrian dies on this stretch.

In 2009, there were 500 pedestrians killed on Britain's roads.

Well, this is the pedestrian route in and out of Goudhurst.

It's not exactly pleasant, but it's what local residents face

if they want to walk into the village.

And with vehicles making a habit of leaving the roads here,

It makes it quite a hazardous pursuit.

Personally, I would never walk down this road.

It is horrendous -

even sitting in a car in the lay-by

with the traffic whizzing past is frightening.

You would be mad to walk, actually. You have to drive everywhere.

You are isolated.

Local residents are also concerned about the lack

of road maintenance here.

The markings are faded, the hedges are overgrown,

and the road is in a poor state -

all of which increase the risk for drivers and pedestrians alike.

Trying to pull out in a vehicle

when you're this sort of height, sitting in a seat,

you can actually see, now,

how quickly a car will be on you as you pull out on a busy morning.

You have to keep your wits about you.

I can't remember the last time there was any really good

maintenance work done on this road.

If you imagine trying to walk up or down this path

at any time of the day or night, it's really, really dangerous.

It's noisy and it's frightening.

This stretch of road is just not suitable to be an A-road.

We get big artic lorries trying to negotiate the bend in the village

and the whole traffic just comes to a halt

because nobody can get either way.

If a lorry comes along, it has to... In order to negotiate that bend,

they have to take both sides of the road in order to move on.

But it's not right that it's an A-road.

Why should the oncoming traffic come to a halt

so that a lorry can get past?

We've heard from the people who live near to and use the A262

and while they're not road experts, they can clearly see

that the Chequers Inn junction and the bends are dangerous.

In addition to this, they're also concerned by...

The A262 clearly raises important safety concerns.

The whole stretch is twice as dangerous as an average British A-road.

'To try to find at what could be causing these accidents,

'I've arranged to meet George Lee from the Road Safety Markings Association,

'the trade body that represents the interests

'of road markings companies.'

How important is it, then, to have good, clear "slow" signs and lines along the middle of the road?

The markings are the most consistent message any driver gets,

whether it's daylight, night-time,

it's the road markings that show the driver where to be positioned on the road.

Presumably, there's some sort of standard. Where would this come on that standard?

Well, that would be just an abject failure on that standard.

George, just what difference do good road markings make to road safety?

All the evidence points to they make an incredible difference.

Where you improve road markings, you start to see a decline in accidents.

Drivers get much more consistent information -

they understand the dangers of the road. We're starting to see evidence

that there's higher levels of serious injury and death on roads

where the road markings have deteriorated.

So what is the cost of redoing the lines on this road?

If there's a serious injury or a death on this road,

the Government equate that to £1.6 million

cost to the British economy, whilst the cost to realign this entire stretch

would be somewhere between £15,000 and £20,000. So...

You do the sums. Where's the good economy?

It would be remarking the road.

Clearly, the "slow" sign is not up to scratch.

Casting your eye down the road, anything else jump out?

The alarming thing is there is very little that is up to scratch.

The central lines have just totally evaporated,

are long overdue replacement.

The edge lines are probably inadequate

in terms of the signal they're giving to drivers.

I'd be very keen see what you make of the rest of this stretch.

-Yes, absolutely.

-Shall we do it?

-Let's go.

-Good stuff.

I drive many, many miles a year,

and I think this is probably one of the worst roads I have seen,

in terms of the quality of the road safety infrastructure,

how it's been let just to slip away and deteriorate.

-There's no street lighting.

-Yeah.

A bit here has been resurfaced. You actually have some road markings.

-Look at the difference there.

-Yes, the contrast is immense.

Now, here there's nothing at all. Is that deliberate?

I would think that probably is. It's a very narrow street

and you can equally, in environments like this, maybe have no markings

and that will have some traffic-calming effect.

-Woah.

-Here we see one of the other reasons why actually having

highway infrastructure that works is absolutely critical.

I'll try to sneak around but he's right in the middle of the road.

There's a sign at the other end saying no heavy goods vehicles.

Well, that's the end we're coming from.

I was up this other end earlier and I saw no indication of that sign.

In fact, there's a sign encouraging tourists to use this route.

-Here we can see again, no road markings at all.

-Yeah.

A total maintenance failure, which could lead to

a catastrophic accident for somebody,

especially with vehicles like that HGV in the road.

It's patchy and clearly road markings haven't been a priority -

they're only good where they've had to lay down a new stretch of road.

That's right. And that almost attaches a level of hypocrisy to it,

because they obviously view the road markings as important enough

to put in a quality level where they've have resurfaced,

and left everything else.

Everyone, it seems, has something to say about this stretch of road,

and the frustration of those who live here is apparent.

I'm returning to see Robert Sergeant,

who's come up with a novel way to try to improve safety levels.

-What an idea. Who thought of this?

-Myself and my daughter.

-And she helped me make it.

-So where do you put him?

-He just rests on the side?

-Just on the side of the fence, yes.

-OK.

He stands about there.

And when you're standing there, does he have much of an impact?

Oh, yes. The cars just come in sight of him down there

and immediately slow down.

And as soon as we put him away, people are asking to see him again.

It's quite amazing.

-Have you had any accidents while he's been out?

-No, so it does work.

Obviously, anything like that, people get used to

and they know what it is after a while,

so it's not going to work forever.

We've heard what local road users and industry experts

have to say about this road

and later we'll try to get an answer from Kent County Council

on what they plan to do to improve safety here.

Now, we all know it's illegal to drive with one of these

clasped to the side of your head, yet many of us struggle

to go without using a mobile when we're behind the wheel.

So just what difference can making or receiving a call

make to your driving skills?

Well, I've come to the Transport Research Laboratory to find out.

In 2005, 13 people were killed and more than 300 were injured

in crashes where drivers were using a hand-held mobile phone,

but I want to find out how dangerous it is using a mobile phone

hands-free while driving.

So, in his first test, I'll be doing just that

while at the same time trying to drive at a constant speed.

Please start the engine and proceed to drive.

So, the eye-tracking system is taking three shots of the driver

and that monitors where the driver is looking,

based on reference points on the driver's face,

so it picks up very precisely the direction of the driver's gaze.

So, Joe's starting the car-following task now

and Elaine is about to start the mobile phone conversation.

OK, Joe. If I say Felix is darker than Antoine,

who is the lighter of the two?

Felix... Antoine's the lighter of the two.

Notice that when Joe's talking on the phone,

he's not checking his mirrors at all.

He concentrates on the road ahead but doesn't have awareness of what's going on around him.

Over a third of UK motorists have admitted to being distracted

by their mobile phone while driving.

If a car drove 360 miles in six hours,

how fast is the car going in miles per hour?

360 miles...in six hours....

Erm...

60mph.

So even though these are quite simple questions,

Joe struggles to get the answers correct, and that's because it's difficult to do two things at once.

'Recent studies have shown that you are four times more likely

'to be killed or injured in a crash

'when using a mobile phone, even if you're using hands-free.'

He's not doing badly.

His attention is clearly on the talking, rather than driving.

He's lost track of his mirrors, of what's going on around him,

and he has been struggling with some quite simple questions,

showing just how difficult it is to combine talking on the phone

with driving.

He's responded quite well to the other traffic that's been around him

but his speed's been quite variable

through this curve-following section,

when he's trying to keep at a constant 50mph.

That is the end of the drive. Please bring the vehicle to a halt.

Compared to other participants that have done this test,

Joe's behaviour is very similar - his reaction times were slower,

he lost awareness of what was going on around the vehicle,

and his control of his own vehicle was poorer.

That was really tough.

Really tough.

A recent study found that having a mobile phone conversation

can distract the driver from the road for an average

of two and a half minutes AFTER finishing the conversation.

We've watched Joe driving whilst using a mobile phone.

We've now raised the challenge for him by asking him to do something

illegal on the public roads - to send text messages while driving.

Incredibly, 47% of motorists believe that texting

while driving DOESN'T affect their attention.

I'd now like you to send a practice text message.

Please send Adam a text to say, "I am driving a great car simulator."

That is, "I am driving a great car simulator."

Right, I'll text Adam.

So here we go. I'm doing 60 at the moment.

See if I can keep it at that.

He's taking his eyes off the road for three or four seconds at a time.

A little bit of drifting out of lane.

"A...

"great...

"car..."

-Drifted off to the left.

-"..cat." Damn you, predictive text.

"..car...sim-u-lat-or."

Motorists who use their mobile phone while driving

take their eyes off the road for an average of two seconds at a time.

So if you were driving at 70mph,

you'd travel 63m in that time.

That's the length of six double-decker buses.

-Wow.

-And off to the hard shoulder, slightly.

-The hard shoulder, there!

That's sent, I think.

"I am driving a great car simulator."

We saw there the big effect that we see when we observe people

driving and trying to text, and that is that they drift out of their lane

and drift off into adjacent lanes, potentially causing an accident.

Joe did reasonably well.

His speed decreased,

he wasn't checking his mirrors either.

Um...yeah.

A danger on the roads, to text and drive.

That is the end of the drive. Please bring the vehicle to a halt.

There we go.

The questions were really hard and I could tell

that I wasn't getting them right and was having to really think about them,

and no doubt my driving was suffering.

And then the text messaging, I just had to take my eyes off the road all the time.

That would've been a bit of a disaster if I'd been on a real road.

Whether it was Katie's error, that split second...

it's recorded as accidental death,

but we truly believe that if anything comes from losing Katie,

that something ought to be done about the junction,

and it is down to somebody to say, "Yes, we're going to do it."

We've done all we can.

We did feel we weren't getting very far with the council,

as far as getting any road surface changed or anything.

I understand it's a lot of money, but eventually, something has to be done.

Back on the A262, the problems facing motorists

and pedestrians are still very real.

Residents are fed up. They've seen too many accidents at dangerous junctions,

cars crashing into property, and they believe it's only a matter of time before a pedestrian is killed.

They want to know what the council plans to do to make things better on this road.

I hoped to speak to Kent County Council highways department inside this building

but they declined our request for interview.

Instead, they gave us a quite long, wordy statement.

Allow me to paraphrase.

They talk about Kent generally, how they've exceeded Government targets by reducing crashes.

They've been educating motorist with their country roads campaign

over the past two summers, and they have an annual review of crashes

to look for patterns of incidence.

They do admit there's still much work to still be done

and that they will continue to work with partners

to reduce these numbers further.

However, we put several specific problems to them about the A262

and the only time they address that road is right here,

in this tiny bit of the statement.

They talk about the junction where Katie Mitchell sadly lost her life,

and how it's been resurfaced with high-friction and they've renewed the road markings.

All true, but they don't look at the idea

of fundamentally redesigning the junction.

Also, there's no mention here, anywhere, of all the problems

outside Goudhurst - those dangerous bends,

so I have no idea what they think about those.

So all I can now do, really,

is put this statement to the people of Goudhurst.

I don't believe that they're managing to cut down on accidents.

You only have to look at the hedgerows and see the holes

as you drive along.

Since I spoke to you last, two accidents on The Bends up here.

The interactive sign was actually glanced,

which now looks up in the air bit,

so just in the last couple of weeks, more accidents,

so it's happening all the time.

At the end of the day, the roads have got to be kept up

and maintained, and made safe for people.

It's terrible. It is sad, because it's not fair -

it's not fair for the local residents here,

it's not fair for us as a business

and also, it's not fair for the sacrificial martyr,

which eventually is going to come on. It will happen.

The A262 used to be a quiet country road.

Sadly, those days are long gone, and to be honest,

the road maintenance and engineering doesn't seem to have kept pace

with the volume of traffic

that now comes through the village of Goudhurst.

At one end, you've got dangerous bends with frequent accidents

and inadequate road markings.

At the other end, a junction that's fundamentally flawed -

an accident waiting to happen.

Clearly, much more needs to be done to protect people

as they pass through this beautiful part of Kent.

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