In 2004, 44 people died on Cornwall's roads

Research by Cornwall County Council shows 250 people were hurt in accidents on the A3058, between St Austell and Newquay, over the past six years.

Of those, 20 people were seriously injured and three died. About 7,000 vehicles a day use the road.

New measures are being introduced by the council to promote road safety, including new engineering projects and increasing driver awareness of dangers.

We can try to engineer these problems, but the final determinant is the person who is sitting behind the wheel Peter Moore, Cornwall County Council

Mark Wheeldon, a firefighter who works at Summercourt on the A3058, said he was not surprised the road is considered officially dangerous.

He said: "People already come quickly through the 30mph zone, but then speed up to try and get through the traffic lights."

Other roads named by the council as dangerous included: the A3059 from St Columb to Newquay, the A3073 at Bude, the A388 Launceston to Treburley and the A3047 from Camborne to Pool.

The new measures being taken to make roads safer include road planners, the county council and the Highways Agency looking at ways to engineer safety into the roads by using traffic calming measures.

Traffic lights, reducing speed limits and introducing restrictions outside schools are also being considered.

Peter Moore, chief engineer for transportation at Cornwall County Council, said: "We believe there are things we can do looking at routes as a whole and doing treatments along the whole of the road to get consistent safety along it.

"But we still have the issue of the responsibility of individual road user. We can try to make the roads safer and we can try to engineer these problems, but the final determinant is the person who is sitting behind the wheel."

Provisional figures for 2004 indicate that 44 people died on all of Cornwall's roads. Some 218 were seriously injured and nearly 2,500 suffered slight injuries.

In 2003, 31 people died, 302 suffered serious injury and 251 suffered slight injury.