As thousands of drivers and their vehicles head into Cornwall for the Bank Holiday weekend, local pressure group Safe38 has urged everyone to take the utmost care on the A38, a road which they say is "not fit for purpose".

Here, chairman James Millidge gives the latest updates from the group.

With the recent increase in traffic levels we have seen a significant number of incidents on the A38 especially between Trerulefoot and Carkeel particularly with the latest fatal accident in April. Our thoughts at Safe38 are, as always, with all those who have been impacted by these tragic events.

Requests to join our campaign Facebook pages always spike after accidents and closures of the road, and we invariably have social media commentators blaming dangerous drivers who are speeding rather than the road itself for the issues. Often it is said it is people who do not know the road who are to blame. At Safe38 we would never want to jump so quickly to speculate on the causation of a collision as it takes time for the police to investigate them and for the facts to become known.

Safe38 is and always will be a campaign that is based on evidence and first-hand knowledge of the road, so let’s look at those facts.

It might be of some surprise to people that the two highest causes of collisions on the A38 in SE Cornwall (making up 64% of incidents) are failing to look properly and judge another vehicle’s speed. Careless and reckless driving comes in at number 3 (21%) for primary causes. We also know that the people most at risk of being involved in an incident are generally local people who have used the road for many years and know it well - and not primarily visitors to the County, although August does show the highest month overall for collisions which is also when the road is at its busiest.

This begs the question: Why are local people who know the road well more likely to be involved in a collision on the A38? Why do the drivers on the A38 perform so badly statistically speaking as we know that the killed and seriously injured rate on the A38 between Trerulefoot and Saltash is around three times higher than the national average for a road of its type? Is it that drivers in South East Cornwall are just less skilled or more prone to take dangerous risks?

The evidence would suggest not as the local road network in SE Cornwall does not have a dramatically high collision rate when compared to other parts of the County.

To answer these questions we must understand something called ‘performance shaping factors.’ Certain environmental conditions can shape how a person reacts in any given situation and when it comes to this road there are a myriad of hazards that drivers have to negotiate which often can become overwhelming and create an environment where mistakes and errors are simply more likely.

Due to the design of the road itself and the high traffic volumes which are in excess for what is it designed to carry, when an error occurs it often results in a higher level of severity as there is no segregation of traffic like there is on a dual carriageway, for example. Modern dual carriageways by design ‘engineer out’ these hazards which is why they are statistically far safer or maybe more accurately far easier for drivers to drive on without incident.

Please be on your guard when driving on this road. It is not fit for purpose as a road that is part of the strategic road network and so all drivers need to compensate accordingly for its engineering deficiencies by taking extra special care when using it. In our next column I will be updating you on the next step in our campaign for a safe A38 and how you can help us achieve that in the next column.