ANOTHER week, another fatal crash in the Cotswolds – or so it seems at the moment.

I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve reported on a serious or fatal crash in the district this year, and each time there are new pleas for action to prevent more tragedies.

This is quite right; we need to do something. But what exactly?

The Cotswolds, due to its geography, has so many winding country roads with sharp bends and turnings that, frankly, it is always going to be a somewhat dangerous place to drive unless we completely overhaul the road network and bring in vast motorways which would swallow up the green fields we all love.

That’s not going to happen, for obvious reasons, so all we can do is encourage safer driving on the roads we have.

One way of doing this is lowering the speed limit but, without vast investment in cameras, it would be all too easy for drivers to simply ignore the limits. Plus, sometimes a lower limit is not the answer as many roads have large straight sections where, say, 60mph is perfectly safe, you just have to use common sense and slow down for the bends.

So perhaps better driver education is the answer. At the moment, drivers are only forcibly shown shocking footage of crashes and their consequence after they are caught speeding, as part of a speed awareness course. Perhaps ‘forced’ exposure to these kinds of images, which leave a lasting impression and make you think twice about your driving, should be mandatory to everyone who gets behind the wheel.