People have been seeking action for decades

The debate around the safety of the Standing Stane Road has rumbled on for decades now – and the clamour for some sort of action to curb crashes grows significantly when tragedy strikes.

Three people have lost their lives on the route in the last two and a half years, and families across the region have been affected by accidents of varying degrees for some time now.

They include Ryan Leigh Dorrill, 25, from Kirkcaldy, who died on Hogmanay 2018 when his Vauxhall Astra left the road and crashed into a tree at around 10am that morning.

That incident came just a matter of weeks after the community was shocked by another crash on the Standing Stane Road on November 11 which resulted in the deaths of two teenagers and left another seriously injured.

In March 2007, there was a similar outpouring of grief when three young men were killed when their vehicle struck a tree.

Driver Peter Reilly, 21, Brian Wight and Christopher Mallin, both aged 16, were pronounced dead at the scene.

And two other families were left bereft in May 2005 when two men were killed in a head-on collision involving a car and a van.

Gareth Blackadder, 19, an apprentice plumber from Lumphinnans, and George Couper, 33, from Leven, lost their lives in that incident.

In December 2019, Natalia Kowszyn and Weronika Dawgul were hailed as heroes when they ran towards the blazing wreckage of a four-vehicle pile-up on the Standing Stane.

The two mums managed to pull people out of the cars to safety before the vehicles burst into flames.