Calls for crash barriers on the A34 are being made in a bid to avoid a repeat of the type of accident that saw three schoolboys and a local student killed on Oxford’s ring road six years ago.

Campaigners say motorists are being put at unnecessary risk, with the “lessons of the past being ignored”.

While £735,000 was spent on erecting central crash barriers on the Eastern Bypass after a car veered across the central reservation at 70mph into oncoming Traffic, it is claimed that the failure to do the same on the A34 is leaving drivers dangerously unprotected.

Only bushes separate northbound and southbound traffic on the A34 stretch between the villages of South Hinksey and North Hinksey.

And villagers fear it is only matter of time before a lorry ploughs across the reservation.

The issue has been raised by the chairman of South Hinksey Parish Council, Maggie Rawcliffe, at the Botley Traffic Advisory Committee, made up of representatives from Botley, Cumnor, Wytham, North and South Hinksey.

The committee is to write to the Highways Agency urging immediate action.

Mrs Rawcliffe said: “It is a very dangerous situation. A central barrier on the A34 runs continuously from the M4, except for some reason from the South Hinksey slip to North Hinksey.”

She said that an accident last month on the A34, when an HGV crashed into the central reservation just north of the Milton interchange, highlighted the danger. Mrs Rawcliffe claimed that such an incident between the two Hinksey villages could have resulted in the loss of lives.

She said: “People need to recognise that the A34 is now a designated Euroroute. It is a motorway by any other name.”

Her husband, Peter, said: “There is no crash barrier there, only intermittent bushes which would be turned to matchwood by a lorry. When the inevitable accident happens, if the road is busy, many could be killed or injured. Crash barriers are standard on new roads of this size and for good reason.

“Surely, we have moved beyond the time when human sacrifice is required before action is taken?”

Alan Stone, secretary of the Botley Traffic Advisory Committee, said the danger was made worse because the northbound carriageway was substantially higher than the southbound carriageway on this stretch of the A34.

In May 2005, Marshall Haynes, Liam Hastings and Josh Bartlett, all aged 13, died, when the car they were travelling in hit oncoming traffic on the Eastern Bypass.

Oxford Brookes University engineering student Howard Hillsdon, 21, was also killed in the crash.

Former nurse Angela Dublin was jailed for two years after she admitted her dangerous driving had caused the deaths.

Highways Agency spokesman James Wright said: “Among the many factors we take into consideration when deciding whether to install a safety barrier in the central reservation is the distance between carriageways.

“The A34 near Hinksey is a straight section of road with up to 15 metres between carriageways and the risk of a vehicle crossing from one carriageway to the other is low.

“On other sections — where the carriageways are closer together, for example, or on approaches to junctions — a safety barrier has been provided.

“We are keeping an open mind on this. Should we come do any maintenance over the next five years we would look at the possibility of introducing a barrier along that section of road.”