Last night I happened upon another serious accident on the A487 between Blaenplwyf and Llanddeiniol, just south of Aberystwyth. I was second on the scene (behind the author of a recent well-received book on R. S. Thomas) and found three young men having just emerged miraculously unscathed from a car that was lying on its roof in the road. Judging from the state of their car, they were all very lucky to be alive. No other cars had been hit.This is the third serious accident I’ve seen seen on this stretch of road this year and only last month a motorcyclist was killed. It’s a tempting spot to overtake following a series of bends at either end but is deceptively short at high speed and cars seem to run out of road. Since 2006 the A487 through Ceredigion has seen nine people killed and 136 injured, 44 of them seriously.
Today Ceredigion Council Leader Keith Evans issued a press release calling for a road realignment, presumably with the idea of lengthening the straight stretch and improving visability. Despite being identified as an accident blackspot, this part of the A487 doesn’t feature in the Assembly’s recently published National Transport Plan.
There’s no doubt that something has to be done - people are dying. However, given that we’re not going to see a dual carriageway here (nor would want to), it could be argued that, rather than making overtaking slightly less dangerous, in pure road safety terms it would make more sense to actually put in another bend to rule out high speed overtaking as an option altogether.