Fatal crash A1088 road junction to be reviewed
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Family handout
Jamie Finlay died in hospital three days after the 2017 crash
The design of a road junction which was the site of a fatal head-on crash will be reviewed, a council has said.
Jamie Finlay, 28, died after the car he was a passenger in hit an oncoming vehicle on the A1088 in Ixworth, Suffolk, on 8 May 2017.
Coroner Jacqueline Devonish said there was a risk of future deaths at the junction if it was not changed.
Suffolk County Council said it would review the layout, but other road improvement plans were a priority.
Mr Finlay, who was from Woolpit, was a passenger in a car being driven by a work colleague at the time of the collision on the 60mph limit A1088.
In a prevention of future deaths report, Ms Devonish said a car travelling in the opposite direction to Mr Finlay had attempted to turn right, off the A1088 and on to Thetford Road, before the crash.
But the driver had turned early, before a bollard marking the centre of the carriageway, and was heading for the wrong side of Thetford Road.
“He swerved back into the A1088 when he saw the car, in which Jamie Finlay was a passenger, appear around the bend prior to the junction,” she wrote.
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Geograph / Adrian Cable
Mr Finlay died after the car he was a passenger in hit an oncoming vehicle turning right before a filter lane bollard
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The road, pictured here in 2012, seen from the direction the other car had been travelling from
The coroner’s report said Mr Finlay’s colleague did not brake as he approached a sweeping bend at the junction with Thetford Road and was “perhaps going too fast” to avoid a collision with the oncoming vehicle.
Mr Finlay was taken to Addenbrooke’s Hospital after the crash and died three days later.
Ms Devonish said a repeat of the crash which led to Mr Finlay’s death “could occur” without action to improve the design of the road.
“The design of the filter lane and junction from the A1088 to Thetford Road does not prevent drivers turning right ahead of the bollards, and onto the wrong side of those bollards into Thetford Road,” she wrote.
In response, the council said the collision was one of only three in five years at the junction.
However, the authority said it would review the junction design and layout to “reduce the opportunity to turn right in advance of the centre island”.
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