Road safety reviewed around US air bases

A REVIEW of road safety around US visiting forces bases in the UK has been ordered by Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, following the death of Harry Dunn.

In a letter to the Dunn family, Mr Shapps said officials would examine videos of routes around the bases, rate the roads and recommend safety i nterventions that could lower risk.

These could range from signs alerting visiting drivers to stay on the left of the road, to speed-calming measures.

The review, by the Road Safety Foundation, will start at RAF Croughton where Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a US intelligence official, allegedly killed 19-year- old Mr Dunn in a road crash in August last year.

Mrs Sacoolas, 43, claimed diplomatic immunity after the crash, alleged to have been caused when she drove on the “wrong side of the road for 20 seconds”.

Mr Shapps instructed the RSF to conduct a review of roads around all 10 US Visiting Forces bases in England, starting with routes between RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire and RAF Barford St John in Oxfordshire.

Inspections will expand to the Cambridgeshire bases RAF Alconbury and RAF Molesworth, Suffolk bases RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall, and Norfolk’s RAF Feltwell, concluding at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, RAF Welford in Berkshire and RAF Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire.

Radd Seiger, the Dunn family spokesman, described the response from Mr Shapps and his team as “nothing short of fantastic”. He added: “He, like us, recognises the risks to life and limb in these road environments outside US bases and is approaching the review of road safety absolutely correctly.”