A mother was mown down and killed in front of her family after going to her son's aid after a car crash.

Lynda Waner, 49, rushed to Saddlescombe Road, near Devil's Dyke, when she was told son Toby Gosling had rolled his car after skidding on ice.

But tragically she was knocked down and killed instantly when another car , mounted the grass verge just metres from where her son had crashed.

An inquest at Brighton Coroners' Court was told that Mrs Waner, who lived with her husband, Martin, in Hamilton Close, Portslade, was carried through a barbed wire fence into a field beside the road and suffered multiple injuries.

Her sons Ryan, Liam and Toby Gosling comforted each other during the hearing as Ryan recounted how Mrs Waner died, despite their attempts to resuscitate her.

The inquest was told that Toby was driving towards Henfield when he skidded off the road just before 8am on February 14.

His car crashed through the fence and rolled over but he escaped serious injury.

He telephoned his step-father who contacted Toby's mother and brother, Ryan, who were driving a short distance behind. They reached Toby soon afterwards and parked beside the road.

While Toby sat in the back of his mother's car, Mrs Waner and Ryan walked on the verge towards the brow of the hill to try to get a signal on their mobile phones and to warn on-coming motorists of the danger on the icy stretch of the carriageway.

Ryan told the inquest he was a few paces behind his mother when he saw a Vauxhall Astra drive towards them.

He said: "As the car came over the brow of the hill we both started flagging it down. The car started sliding to the left and then back towards my mum."

He shouted out to warn her and started to run towards her but neither of them were able to avoid being hit by the car.

Ryan, who did not suffer serious injury, said his other brother, Liam, arrived at the scene moments after the collision.

Ryan said he did not blame the driver, Timothy Harris, for the accident.

Mr Harris, from Hove, who will not face any criminal proceedings following the collision, told the hearing he saw Mrs Waner waving at him and took her signal as a warning about the road.

He said: "I touched the brake and the car slid off to the right. It came back to the left. The car rotated. I came back across the road and that was when it impacted with Mrs Waner."

PC Adrian Short, the crash investigation officer, said the lay-out of the road created a frost pocket.

The hearing was told gritters had salted the road the night before. Two days earlier the stretch of road had been closed for a few hours because it was so icy and the following night gritters had laid more than four times the normal level of salt there.

A road sign, with the word Slow, had been left by the roadside.

Brighton and Hove City Council highways officer Stuart Wilson said he was unaware of any exceptional problems with ice causing crashes on the stretch of road.

Brighton and Hove Coroner Veronica Hamilton-Deeley recorded a verdict of accidental death.

She accepted the theory that a micro-climate existed on the stretch of road which did not normally cause problems but, because of the weather conditions that morning, the surface became dangerous.