Mrs Flowers wants better safety measures on the bridge

A barrier arm on the Clifton Suspension Bridge became embedded in the roof of Joy Flowers' car in 1996.

A cyclist had cut in front of her, triggering a pressure pad and lowering the barrier on to her vehicle.

And Nailsea-based Mrs Flowers narrowly avoided a repeat of the incident after being forced to break sharply last week.

She said: "I don't want the barrier to come down on any open top or soft top car.

"Fortunately, I had protection years ago but I don't want there to be a fatality before somebody looks into this."

Bridgemaster John Mitchell said: "Mrs Flowers was hit by a barrier some years ago but that was caused by a cyclist overtaking her.

"That doesn't happen now as we have a special route for them. More than four million vehicles pass through the bridge each year and the amount of problems we get is relatively small.

"We do try to get a good throughput of traffic but to make it safer we should maybe have slower barriers, but this will reduce the capacity of the system."