DRIVERS faced miles of misery coming in and out of Dorset last night as a spate of emergencies brought chaos to the roads.

Hundreds of commuters were caught in tailbacks for hours as collisions and car fires closed the A338 Bournemouth Spur Road, first southbound and then northbound.

The chaos started when a Volkswagen Golf owned by a Bournemouth man was totally destroyed by fire just after 4pm, between the Ashley Heath and Blackwater junctions. Both lanes were closed due to the smoke.

Thirty minutes later, three cars collided near the same spot on northbound side.

And the traffic got even worse when two more cars collided northbound on the same road around a quarter of a mile away at 6.12pm, and one caught fire.

Crew manager John Lewis from Christchurch fire station said: “It is possible the accidents might have led to one another.

“We ask drivers not to let their attention be diverted and to reduce their speed at the scene of an accident, especially at this time of year.”

The crashes and fires sparked a five-mile tailback and the chaos was worsened by other incidents in the New Forest.

There were heavy queues on diversions to the Avon Causeway and Matchams Lane. One driver said: “It took me an hour to get from Queens Park to the Avon Causeway – it was going about a car length every five to 10 minutes.”

Another said: “The road was just like a car park.”

Resident Carolyn Snow said at 5.45pm traffic was queuing from Hurn Post Office to the Ski Centre in Matchams Lane.

Geoffrey Fardell from the nearby Londis store at St Catherine’s Hill said: “The sad thing is people in this area are getting used to it because there are so many accidents at the Blackwater junction.”

One eyewitness said that she saw three motorcyclists that were stuck in the traffic on the Spur Road turn around and drive the wrong way.

The police reopened one lane of the northbound carriageway at 7pm and the other 8.30pm.

The other incidents causing problems for traffic coming into Dorset included a lorry which broke down in the inside lane of the westbound A31 near Cadnam at 6.45pm, with traffic queuing back towards the M27.

Two vehicles also collided at Cadnam, and a vehicle went into a ditch at Burley in the New Forest.

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