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MACCLESFIELD'S infamous Cat and Fiddle Road has been named and shamed as the most dangerous road in Britain.

The A537 route from Macclesfield to Buxton has topped the list of the UK's most dangerous roads in a damning report released by the AA last week.

They have blasted the picturesque Peak District route, which is loved by bikers, for the "persistently high risk" it poses to motorists, after 33 major crashes from 1999 to 2001.

During that period four lives were claimed, all motorcyclists, and 29 people were seriously injured, 26 on motorbikes, with many being head on collisions.

From 2001 to date there have been another 20 accidents, one fatal, and 19 serious.

And now the AA say that the badly designed road is continuing to pose a high risk to users and are demanding that much more money be spent on improvements to junction layouts, signing and road markings, and the addition of safety barriers and speed cameras.

The road is one of the highest in the UK, at about 450 metres, and is often affected by bad weather not experienced on nearby lower roads.

A spokesman for the AA said: "We acknowledge that Cheshire County Council have completed a lot of work on the road.
"But more needs to be done to improve the design and safety features. There are some particularly nasty bends there, particularly if the person is on a bike.

"The design of the road is a thrill particularly for bikers, a lot of whom are using the route. It only takes a minute for them to take a sharp bend and be thrown off."

And Guy Danner, 50, the manager of the Cat and Fiddle pub for the past year, said that the statistics are only part of the picture.

Living at the pub with his wife Christine,42, and three teenage daughters Rachel, Abigail and Emily, he has witnessed many "walking wounded" from accidents on the road.

He said: "The road claims its fair share of accidents. People are simply going too fast. We have had our fair share of the walking wounded in here. They don't appreciate how windy it is.

"For every accident which is recorded there must be ten that go unreported. People are not getting the full picture. Many bikers or motorists who have bumps don't report it for the sake of insurance.

"There's nothing wrong with the road. It's the way people drive."

He added: "People are blaming the bikers but it's only about five per cent of them who go in for this type of blazing up country roads.

"I think Cheshire County Council are doing everything they can to protect people, but at the end of the day it's down to the drivers."

Cheshire County Council are responsible for 13 miles of the stretch; the boundary being 150 yards past the Cat and Fiddle Pub.

John Moss, of Cheshire County Council Road Safety Unit, said that over the last two years the Council had ploughed a mammoth £200,000 into protecting motorists, with signage at every bend, chevrons and road signs.

"We have spent a fortune on lining and signing, the highest number possible of signing and chevrons possible. There are already crash barriers everywhere," he said.

Head of Macclesfield Traffic Unit Sergeant Ian Holley said police had been conducting a high profile presence on the road for the past few years which had drastically improved the numbers of accidents.

He said back to the success of the ongoing initiative "Operation Magpie", a high profile police presence on Macclesfield's trouble spots which was introduced in 2002. He said that serious incidents along the stretch of the A537 have been halved during the second year of the initiative, with eight serious incidents on the road this year to date.

Like all roads in Macclesfield, the route is reviewed on a regular basis. Police have said that if a high level of speed related incidents are recorded on any particular road, then all efforts will be made to install speed cameras.

Mobile cameras are currently used on several stretches of the Cat and Fiddle.

Superintendent Penny Wilson of Macclesfield Police said: "The A537 has been the subject of considerable policing effort throughout 2002 and 2003. Together with other agencies and the motorcycle community we have been working hard to do as much as we can to reduce the number of people killed and injured.

"There is now a 50 mph speed limit which applies and officers target those who break the law on a regular basis particularly during the summer months.

"Those efforts have resulted in far fewer casualties in recent years which is not represented in the statistics published by the AA.

"No-one has been killed on that stretch of road since June 2001.

"Whilst we will continue to put extra effort into policing that stretch of road it remains the responsibility of everyone who uses the A537 to adhere to the speed limits to ensure the safety of everyone."