COTSWOLD roads have become death traps due to years of underinvestment.

That is the verdict of Gloucestershire County Council's new leader Barry Dare, whose Conservative group has vowed to double the amount spent to bring them up to scratch.

Cllr Dare made his comments following a damning documentary on the state of Britain's roads, which was screened on BBC 1 on Monday.

The Real Story, hosted by Fiona Bruce, suggested that nearly half of English local authorities were underspending on road repairs - despite the fact that experts claim the network is in a worse condition now than in the 1970s.

And Cllr Dare, who looked into taking legal action against his own council after a serious accident in the North Cotswolds allegedly caused by poor surfacing, is determined that Gloucestershire will buck the trend.

He said: "It's been a case of pennywise and pound foolish. If I'd been doing anything like the maximum legal speed limit, my accidents could have been very serious or even fatal.

"I had a quite a huge mailbag from people who'd been through the same thing.

"We (Tory group) see this as one of the major priorities - the money has got to be found."

Cllr Dare says he had three accidents in 18 months on North Cotswold roads, which he puts down to their poor state.

In the first instance, a tyre on his car was condemned by experts following an impact, while in the most serious case in 2003 when he drove his Alfa Romeo over a deep puddle-covered hole, the suspension and brakes on the vehicle were ruined and a tyre blew.

Cllr Dare says he inquired about claiming damages under the council's own insurance but was told he would be unlikely to win the claim so dropped the matter.

However, during the run-up to May's elections, he suffered another blown tyre after running over a pothole on the Batsford to Blockley road.

It is cases such as his own that have prompted the county's leading group to drastically increase spending on roads.

Clr Dare says that around £20 million had been spent on the county's roads annually but the Tories plan to inject an extra £4million annually over the next five years in a bid to clear a backlog of road repairs.

The move is certain to win favour with road safety experts, who expressed their own fears on Monday night's programme.

Paul Watters of the AA Motoring Trust said: "We looked at some data for 2002, which shows that in areas that had underspent their allocations, there were 900 more casualties than those that had overspent. The overspenders had good reductions in casualties."