Firefighters spent an hour supporting the body of a severely injured elderly woman as she was cut free from the mangled wreck of her overturned car.

Fire station manager Chris Wilson, from Rewley Road in Oxford, has described the aftermath of the car smash at a notorious blackspot near Witney.

The collision happened at the junction of the A415 and the B449 to Hardwick on Wednesday afternoon - just 125m from where a 21-year-old man from Oxford was killed on Saturday.

Mr Wilson and his crew arrived to find that the driver of a Peugeot 406 had managed to pull himself out of his battered car, but the woman was overturned in a ditch, trapped in her Peugeot 206.

He said: "The car was precariously positioned upside down, 10ft below the road in a ditch and in a foot of freezing water.

"We put two firefighters into the car so they could support her and take the weight off the seatbelt which was digging into her chest and stomach."

It was an hour before the woman - who is thought to be in her 60s - could be extracted from her car. She was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.

Mr Wilson said: "The scene of this latest collision was in sight of police signs stating 'Fatal accident here on Saturday'."

At 8.30am on that day, 21-year-old James Franklin, of Monmouth Road in Oxford, was driving his Renault Clio when he collided with a Ford Transit van.

He later died at the John Radcliffe Hospital as a result of his injuries - making him the fifth person to die on that stretch of road in three years.

There have been 53 deaths on the county's road this year - 13 more than last year.

Mr Wilson advised people to visit www.365alive.co.uk, a campaign set up to save 365 lives on the roads over a 10-year period.

A415'S grim toll

James Franklin, 21, of Monmouth Road, Oxford, died on Saturday after a collision between his Renault Clio and a Ford Transit van.

In September 2004 Sonia Dines Figuiers Rodrigues, five, and Jose Avelino Dinis Figuiera, 22, died near Ducklington after Carlos Rodrigues hit an oncoming car while overtaking.

In December 2003, a motorcyclist was killed near the Ducklington junction.

Two months earlier motorcyclist Janette Weekes, 45, of Wantage, died in a crash with a car near Standlake.