Residents of Little Almshoe, a small hamlet in Hertfordshire, are campaigning for road safety improvements after enduring around 40 crashes over the past three decades, including five so far this year. The concentration of collisions on an otherwise quiet rural street has turned it into a notorious accident blackspot, disrupting village life and repeatedly drawing police, ambulance and fire crews to the scene.

Pensioner Paul Pinkstone, 70, whose cottage sits beside the road and who has lived there for 30 years, is often first on the scene to help injured drivers before ambulances arrive. He says many of the crashes would be avoidable with better road safety measures, pointing to poor and unclear signage and faded, eroded road markings. The collisions have also cost him personally, as he has had to spend thousands of pounds repairing fences damaged by vehicles left written off at the roadside.