Motorists being left to fend for themselves

'HEAVY rain causes carnage on roads' the headline on this newspaper's sister website, DevonLive, screamed on Saturday and, after a delay-hit trip back from Wiltshire to Devon on Friday night, I must concur.

- PHILIP BOWERN

'Carnage' might be a bit of an overstatement, but there were certainly long delays caused by a great deal of standing water adding around an hour to a journey that should take no more than two-and-a-half.

I have been regularly driving that route from Devon to West Wiltshire - via the A38, a short section of the M5 and then the A30 and A303 - for most of my adult life. Roadworks, road accidents and even the odd fall of snow have held me up in the past but it is now becoming clear that while those other hazards remain a possibility, it is heavy rain and flooding that are most likely to cause problems today.

You would expect, therefore, that those responsible for the roads - The Highways Agency and the highways authorities - would be geared up to respond when heavy rain is forecast. There are, after all, a number of points on those major roads, particularly on the Blackdown Hills and the stretch between Ottery St Mary and Honiton, where flooding can reasonably be expected these days.

And yet as we navigated the route on Friday evening, motorists were pretty much left to fend for themselves.

A white BMW car added to the 'carnage' at one of those flooded sections, the first in a series between the end of the Ilminster bypass and Exeter, that we were caught up in. The driver must have hit the standing water at speed, bringing him stuttering to a halt.