IMPROVEMENTS to the junction where a woman was seriously injured in a collision last week is one of three projects which has received the support of Fenland Traffic Management Area Joint Committee.

Junction improvement and/or speed management measures at Swan Bridge in Parson Drove is one of the schemes the committee agreed to support as a bid for funding from Cambridgeshire County Council in 2011/12.

The committee was told at its latest meeting last month that between June 1 2007 and May 31 this year there were eight injury accidents at the Swan Bridge junction, a cross road which joins Main Road, Bridge Drove, The Bank and Murrow Bank.

Most of those incidents involved vehicles overshooting the junction, or turning into the path of oncoming vehicles.

The proposal was put forward by Parson Drove Parish Council, Cambridgeshire County Council Leader Jill Tuck who represents the village and Fenland district councillors Cyril Bellamy and Robert Scrimshaw.

It is a medium-sized (�30,000-�500,000) traffic and safety scheme programme and funding will be considered by the county council’s Cabinet at its December meeting.

The other two Fenland safety schemes that were supported by the committee are traffic lights at the Cromwell Road/Weasenham Lane junction in Wisbech and speed management measures through Christchurch.

A woman watched on helplessly on Friday as emergency crews rescued her trapped mother from a Renault Megane following a collision with a fuel tanker at Swan Bridge. The woman, in her 40s, escaped unhurt but her mother had to be cut from the car.

The injured woman, from Parson Drove, sustained serious injuries was been taken to Peterborough District Hospital for treatment.

The accident happened at around 1.45pm and two fire crews from Wisbech, an emergency rescue vehicle from Peterborough and Magpas Helimedix medical teams were quickly on the scene.

It took some moments for the helicopter bringing in the medical teams to find somewhere nearby to land.

Watch Manager John Chelton, from Wisbech Fire Station, said: “A car collided with a fuel oil tanker at about 1.45pm and we got to the scene within 10 minutes.

“When we got there, we found a woman trapped in the vehicle. It took us 40 minutes to release the injured passenger.

“We used hydraulic equipment to cut the woman out and enabled the paramedics to take her out in a stable state.”

Magpas consultant Rod Mackenzie who was supervising doctors at the scene said: “A woman has been taken out of a car.

“She suffered multiple serious limb injuries, but they are not life threatening.”

Councillor Cyril Bellamy, a local parish and district councillor, said he had been calling for safety improvements at the bridge for more years than he cared to recall.

“As recently as September a cyclist went under a lorry at the bridge,” he said.

“And there have been many accidents there over the years. We have met with Cambridgeshire County Council to seek improvements but so far with no success”.

Cllr Bellamy said in the ten years he ran the nearby Swan public house “you could almost guarantee an accident happening every three months. Once I recall seeing a car balancing precariously on the bridge following an accident.

“Nothing was done then, and nothing has been done since to improve safety there”.

The driver’s brother, who turned up at the scene, said: “This is an awful place. I had an accident here as well. They need to do something about it now.”

One onlooker added: “The traffic at this bridge is now six times as dense compared to when I first moved here some years ago.

“I have complained often about the roads. No one cares. Cambridgeshire County Council, once you get 20 miles north of Cambridge itself, just don’t seem to care.

“Signs that say slow down don’t work.

“These village roads are completely and utterly useless and a menace. And it’s the same with Bellamy’s Bridge just up the road.”