MORE and more Bransgore people are calling for road safety improvements to be carried out at the notorious staggered crossroads where 12-year-old Aarron Keeping lost his life.

Bransgore Parish Council has been asking for some form of traffic calming or means of controlling vehicle movements near the Crown Inn for a decade or more.

But because there had been only minor accidents and no fatalities, Hampshire County Council said it could do nothing.

That changed at about 4.30pm on Tuesday, September 30, when 12-year-old cyclist Aarron Keeping died after a collision with a car there.

Now a petition has been organised and the parish council is expecting the subject to be brought up at its next meeting on October 21.

Aarron’s distraught parents Martin and Freda Keeping, of Burnt House Lane, have thrown their weight behind the call for improvements.

Mr Keeping said: “As far as I know all the parish council and Desmond Swayne [New Forest West MP] is on it.

“We hope some good will come out of Aarron’s death.”

New Forest district councillor John Penwarden has suggested that, as an interim measure, a fence could be erected along the Burley Road side of the pub forecourt to stop pedestrians trying to cross over at the blind corner.

The suggestion has the backing of parish council chairman Cllr Ann Hickman and of Bransgore Residents’ Association chairman June Richards.

Cllr Hickman said that just 24 hours after the accident she had received an email from Hampshire County Council asking for a meeting.

That had taken place and ended with a county official suggesting the 30mph speed limit due to be implemented in a short section of Burley Road before the end of the financial year, could be extended from Thorney Hill crossroads in the east to the village boundary near Bockhampton Road to the west.

“Nobody up to now has taken any notice,” she said.

“We’re still pushing. We’re not going to give up.

“We haven’t had the official version of what happened there yet... but we want something done at these crossroads.”

Mrs Richards said: “We would definitely back some plan to improve that crossing.

“I wouldn’t like to put my name to anything unless it was thoroughly thrashed out with the police, the parish council, somebody from highways and NFDC.”