TWENTY-seven years ago, I used to commute almost every weekend from my home near Manchester to visit my soon-to-be-wife in Poole.

For three years, I’d finish work on Friday evenings and head off down south, the various landmarks along the way becoming more and more familiar with each journey.

The A31 from Cadnam to Ringwood signalled the last leg of the 250-mile journey and the more I travelled its length, the more blasé I became about this potentially dangerous stretch of dual carriageway.

From the hairy moment when three lanes become two as you run out of M27 motorway, to the climb to the Cadnam bend, the dips where surely no mobile phone ever gets a signal and the speedy plunge down towards Ringwood, it’s a road with more pitfalls than many.

It now appears that there are more accidents and incidents than many, which has prompted a timely call from the AA for highway patrol monitoring.

I would defy any driver using that road regularly to be able to say that they have not witnessed an accident, been stuck in a traffic jam or seen idiotically fast driving.

Alarmingly, it’s still possible to legally drive at 70 mph for those 12 miles – which really does beggar belief– but patrols or not, it will always be the standard of driving that creates the problems.