FATAL crashes on the A34 will only increase because thousands of homes are proposed for the county and there are no plans to increase the road's capacity.

That is the verdict of Oxfordshire County Council leader Keith Mitchell following yet another horrific accident on the road on Monday afternoon.

A family of four returning from holiday in France to their home in Lichfield, Staffordshire were all killed when their car became trapped underneath a car transporter on the northbound carriageway at the Islip junction. The dead people were yesterday named as Malcolm Dowling, 46, Janice Dowling, 42, Richard Dowling, 16, and George Dowling, 11.

It means there have now been seven deaths on the A34 in 2005 the same total as the previous three years combined.

The Highways Agency the Government department responsible for the road has yet to commit to any of the five options open to it to improve safety on the A34.

Those options are: adding a third lane in either direction; building a new Oxford bypass; forcing long-distance freight off the road and on to trains; or two separate forms of road charging.

And county council leader Mr Mitchell warned that unless something was done the number of crashes on the road would only rise.

He said: "Anyone who uses the A34 locally will know that it carries a huge number of enormous HGVs, yet it is a two-lane road.

"I think of it as the transport backbone of England. However, like brittle bones in a heavy body, it is simply not up to the job of carrying the ever-growing load of traffic.

"The Government has identified Oxfordshire as an area that can take considerable housing growth, but, wherever it is placed, much of the traffic that housing is bound to generate will find its way on to the A34 at some point.

"We can't go on like this. Something has to be done to take some of the traffic off the A34 and on to other routes, or on to other modes or to increase its capacity. None of the options is easy or cheap."

Mr Mitchell said it was particularly worrying that Oxfordshire was receiving "not a penny of regional transport spending for the foreseeable future".

He added: "Unless the Government comes up with substantial investment in the A34 corridor and that could be road improvements or rail capacity increases we will become more and more gridlocked and, I am afraid, we are likely to continue to see horrific accidents and the resulting chaos.

"Colleagues from councils across the South East agree that improvements to the A34 should be at the very top of the Government's agenda, and every time I have had a chance to raise the question of improvements with Government ministers I have done so."

Statistics from the Highways Agency show that last year just one in six accidents on the A34 (17 per cent) involved HGVs.

But the figures suggest that those involving lorries are likely to be more serious. Of the 24 fatalities on the road between January 2001 and December 2005, ten involved an HGV.

Highways Agency spokesman Kate Woods said: "Any accident that occurs on our network is regrettable, and the accident that occurred on the A34 on Monday is a particularly sad occurrence.

"We are committed to reducing accidents on our network and we are working closely with the police and local authorities to reduce casualty rates. This year we have an accident study on the Newbury Bypass and also one at the Hinksey Hill Interchange near Oxford.

"We also have planned small improvement schemes at Botley northbound on slip, Pear Tree southbound on slip, and one of the lay-bys near Didcot.

The managing director of the firm that owned one of the lorries involved in the accident, Gary Rodwell, of Leicester Heavy Haulage, said it was the first time in the business's 18-year history that one of its vehicles had been involved in an accident on the A34.

However, he said that he did think the road was not big enough to cope with the volume of traffic using it.

He added: "When you have got two lanes of traffic it does not allow much space for other vehicles and a lot of freight does use that road. The alternative route is round the M25 and up the M1 which is much slower and longer. This accident goes to show how dangerous the road is."