Mum speaks of pothole-swerving on fatal crash road

A motorist has described how a pothole "the length of two cars" may have caused a lorry to swerve into her lane causing her to crash on a road where two people died in another crash later that day.

The 31-year-old woman, who we are calling Katie, was driving along the A10 from Littleport to Ely in Cambridgeshire when she crashed at about 11:55 GMT on 12 February.

A fatal collision took place on the same stretch of road later that day and police are investigating its cause.

The county council said it had "recently resurfaced sections of this road", but it was "inappropriate to comment further" due to the police investigation.

Katie, who had her eight-week-old baby in the car at the time, told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire's Dotty McLeod she had to make a split-second decision on what to do.

"All of a sudden, there was this skip truck, with skip on the back, that was on the right side of the road and then it just completely swerved fully head-on to me at speed," she said.

"I couldn't swerve on to the other side of the road because there was traffic coming, so it would have meant a straight head-on collision.

"And I just braked, went straight over to the grass verge into a kind of a ditch and thought 'OK, if I get over far enough, maybe we won't die'."

She added: "This pothole had been there for weeks and it was the length of two cars and the width of half a car so if you're in a normal car you could go round it," said the mother-of-three, who lives in Littleport.

"I don't know if the truck hit it and bounced over to my side of the road or it just tried to swerve it, but it swerved straight on to oncoming traffic."

The skip lorry driver did not stop after the incident and Katie said she had been "shaking... crying".

When she felt a bit calmer, she rang the police to report the incident.

She said: "We're lucky to be alive because had that hit us...

"I told the police 'you need to shut the road, you need to do something'."

Katie said her car was not damaged, and the baby had slept through the whole thing.

A Cambridgeshire Police spokesperson confirmed the pothole had been reported to the force at 12:30 that day and it was explained that Katie needed to contact the council because it was the local authority's responsibility.

The BBC has asked the council to confirm how many reports it has had about potholes on this stretch of the A10, but has not yet heard back.

A council spokesperson said: "We're aware of the incident on the A10 in Littleport, near Blue Boar Drove, and our thoughts and sympathies are with the family and friends of those involved.

"Whilst there is an ongoing police investigation, it would be inappropriate for us to comment further. We're assisting the police with their investigation."

They added that the council carried out regular inspections, had recently resurfaced sections of this road and would be repairing a number of potholes.

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