WORK has started in a bid to reduce accidents at a Holmfirth blackspot.

Highways workers have started to put down 300 metres of anti-skid surface along a dangerous bend in Greenfield Road, where a motorcyclist was killed last month.

Joiner Winston Garlick, 28, of West Slaithwaite, died when his Suzuki crashed on the double bend near The Ford pub on July 27.

It was the latest in a series of accidents on the same stretch of road - and led to urgent calls for action.

Now, Kirklees Council has brought forward accident prevention measures which were due to take place later in the year.

Mrs Kathryn Broadbent, road safety highway engineer, said: "The contractor was already working in the area, so we brought the work forward.

"We are installing 300 metres of anti-skid surface and will be erecting larger chevrons at the roadside to reinforce the existing warning signs."

Steve Chappelow, 40, who has lived on Greenfield Road for four years, welcomed the work.

He said: "There's definitely a problem. It cannot all be driver error. Some accidents probably are caused by speed, but not all of them."

Mr Chappelow, who runs a landscape garden business, has helped the victims of three crashes in recent weeks, two car drivers and a motorcyclist.

"One morning I came out and saw three four-wheel drive cars on their roofs," he said.

"You could be having a barbecue, there would be a screech and a car would go over the wall."

Mr Chappelow said he had contacted Colne Valley MP Kali Mountford, asking for something to be done. This resulted in white lines and road markings being painted.

"Drivers lose the back end of vehicles," he said. "I go at 25mph because I know the road and it is such a bad bend."

Last week, 32-year-old Nicola Ratcliffe, of Carrs Road, Marsden, whose car crashed on the same bend on April 25, called on Kirklees to make the road safer.

She said at least three other cars had crashed on the bend on the day of her accident - and two had ended up on their roofs.

A Kirklees spokesman said that up to the end of April, police had recorded four injury accidents at the bend in five years.

He said improvements were being carried out in a bid to slow traffic and make people aware the two bends were coming up.

Measures included double white lines to prevent overtaking, chevron boards warning of a sharp bend and the word Slow on the road. A drain has been put in to clear surface water coming off fields on to the bends.

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