Motorist fears a tragedy on northbound A-26

He claims that he has observed the surface degradation while travelling the road every day.

“I’m obviously watching the new dual carriageway work as it progresses but you cannot help seeing how the current road seems to be falling into disrepair and is covered in potholes.

“The disintegrating road surface is particularly bad heading north from the old Glarryford turning and under both sections of the Frosses trees,” said the driver.

He contended that such a poor road surface was particularly dangerous at night with cars swerving to avoid potholes and chewed up sections of tarmac.

“Additionally, the lack of lane edge markings such as cats eyes and reflective markers has led to very poor night visibility. Cars regularly put on their full beams just to see the road ahead and I have witnessed a number of near misses as cars have drifted out of lane.”

The motorist says the Glarryford section is by far the worst and expressed surprised there have been no major accidents in the vicinity.

“Also, there are many stones on the road and just this week a car in front made a large chip in my windscreen by throwing up one of these sizable stones.

“While I appreciate we are getting a new road, this will not be delivered for at least 18 months and for the sake of road safety the DRD/TransportNI need to take action. I wrote to them four months ago to raise the issue and they did respond, however the action taken was to lay a few short bands of new tarmac, but many untreated potholes just beyond the new tarmac section remained untouched and such small repairs cannot correct the daily damage being done to this arterial route to and from the North Coast.”