FRESH safety improvements could be carried out on the A64 after a motorist died when his Land Rover flipped and crashed into the central reservation.

Inadequate brakes on a boat-carrying trailer and a “chronic lack of maintenance” have been blamed for the deaths of two men in a double accident last summer, but police have called for a review of the layout of the central reservation barrier.

The matter is to be referred to the Highways Agency.

An inquest heard a Land Rover was pulling the boat at Whitwell-on-the-Hill last August, when the vehicle flipped into the air and landed on its roof.

The Land Rover driver died, as did another driver who swerved to avoid the wreckage and hit a tree.

David Barker, a farmer of Pasture House, Whitwell, told an inquest he had been waiting to get on to the A64 from his farm, when he saw the trailer “snaking” and the Land Rover “catapulted into the air and landed on its roof”.

The Land Rover driver, Thomas Geoffrey Cross, 39, a company director of Grafton Road, Keighley, died in the accident, while his passenger, Stephen Camm, of Pennine Marine, Skipton, was taken to York Hospital for treatment.

Darren Mark Towey, 35, a student from Hebden Walk, in Leeds, also died.

He was driving in the opposite direction, and tried to take evasive action to avoid the out-of-control Land Rover and trailer, but crashed into a tree.

John Broadbridge, deputy North Yorkshire East coroner, recorded verdicts of accidental death on both men.

Traffic Constable David Foster told the hearing the accident happened half a mile east of Barton crossroads last August, when Mr Cross was towing a boat in a trailer he had borrowed.

He was driving from Whitby to Skipton when the trailer “snaked”. Mr Cross used his brakes on the Land Rover, but lost control of the vehicle and the trailer and it overturned on the central reservation.

PC Foster said an examination of the trailer showed it had no braking system and suffered from “a chronic lack of maintenance”.

PC Foster said he believed the central reservation barrier system needed to be examined and changed. Mr Broadbridge said he would pursue the matter with the Highways Agency.

Mr Broadbridge said a crucial factor in the accidents was “the total lack of an adequate braking system on the trailer”.

He said: “It was inevitable that Mr Cross was going to get into difficulties because of the brakes.”

He added the crash barriers, to be effective, needed to be integral across the central reservation, and called their present siting “unfortunate”.