Calls for action following fatal accident.

Midweek Herald: The air ambulance in the Hunters Lodge car park. Photo by Steve WhiteThe air ambulance in the Hunters Lodge car park. Photo by Steve White (Image: Archant)

Residents have renewed calls for safety improvements at a notorious accident blackspot, near Axminster, following the death of an 82-year-old woman.

The pensioner, Pamela Manning, from Harrow, was killed when the car in which she was a passenger was in a collision with a van at the Hunters Lodge crossroads, on the A35, last Wednesday evening.

The accident, at 4.25pm, involved a Renault Kangoo van and a Vauxhall Corsa.

Emergency services found the three female occupants of the Corsa trapped and injured.The back seat passenger was pronounced deceased at the scene.

The other two women, aged 85 and 90, and also from Harrow, were seriously injured. The driver, an 85-year-old woman , and the front seat passenger were taken to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital.

The driver of the Kangoo van, a 61-year-old man from Beer, suffered a minor injury and did not require hospital treatment.

A specialist forensic investigation of the scene took place and the A35 was closed for seven-and-a-half hours.

Police are appealing for witnesses to the crash who are asked to contact them on 101, quoting log number 553 of 100713.

Hunters Lodge crossroads has been the scene of numerous serious accidents over the years and locals have campaigned for a roundabout, but without success.

Now campaigners are renewing their call for action and MP Neil Parish says something must be done ‘to improve this terrible junction’.

Following Wednesday’s fatal crash – the second in the area in the last two months – he has written to the Highways Agency asking them to convene an urgent meeting.

He has told them: “It is more than a year since we had a meeting with the Highways Agency and Uplyme and Axminster councils to discuss improvements to the junction onto the A35 at Hunter’s Lodge.

“Unfortunately there have now been further accidents which resulted in two fatalities and one person critically injured.

“At the last meeting you discussed that while there had been many accidents at the junction there had not been any major fatalities. This now is, unfortunately, no longer the case as we have had fatal accidents within the last month.

“I would therefore ask that we convene a meeting with both Uplyme and Axminster councils in the very near future to discuss ways that we can improve this terrible junction.”