A triple fatality on the roads has prompted the Hertfordshire Mercury to try to persuade highways chiefs to act over an accident blackspot.

In the latest incident, two adults and a toddler were killed in the three-vehicle collision, which occurred on a dangerous bend. A year earlier, a 17-year-old schoolgirl, Chantelle Burridge, was killed in a crash there.

The Mercury learned that a local authority accident report into the previous crash of August 2005 will not be completed until December.

Any action to make the road safer will not be taken until the financial year 2007-08, meaning two years could have passed since the teenager’s death before work is carried out.

News editor Paul Brackley said: “It is obvious to anyone who uses this road that this bend is dangerous, yet it has taken Hertfordshire Highways more than a year to complete a report into it.

“If the authority had acted swiftly after Chantelle’s death and heeded the warnings we reported from police, a coroner and local residents, two young parents and their little toddler could still be alive today.”

In a front-page report to launch the campaign, which continued across two pages inside, the newspaper showed how Hertfordshire Highways has ignored repeated warnings.

B1502 Make It Safe Now encourages readers to sign a petition calling for immediate action. It demands a reduction in the speed limit and urgent work to make the dangerous bend safer.

Group editor-in-chief Colin Grant said: “We believe that action needs to be taken now to improve this road and hope that the combined voices of ourselves and our readers will lead to safety measures being taken which will help stop more lives being lost in the future.”

The petition has been placed online at the paper’s website – www.hertsessexnews.co.uk. It is also available as a hard copy at the paper’s Media Centre HQ in Hertford and circulation executive Pete Wall has distributed it to shops and newsagents across the Mercury’s patch.