QUESTIONS were raised last night about why gritters were not used on a road where a woman died after losing control on what witnesses said was ice.

Brianna Cambridge, from Newhaven, lost her life after her car left the A23 just north of the Pyecombe Texaco garage in the early hours of Monday morning.

The Argus can exclusively reveal Highways England made the decision not to grit the stretch of road at 1pm on Sunday after conferring with their expert forecasters, who said the minimum overnight temperature would be 2.2C.

Neither the agency nor Sussex Police would confirm whether or not ice was on the road on Monday morning but two of the four drivers involved have told The Argus they slid on ice.

The first of four drivers who lost control told The Argus he lost control when he "hit ice".

Yesterday a second driver said: “When I got out of my car I looked and it was a patch of hail that had iced over. The paramedics told me it was just in that area.”

Highways England said ice was not forecast to them by their experts.

Brianna’s father Andy Cambridge said: “I think they should have considered shutting the road.

“They should have had speed limits in place, kept people to 40 or 50mph because it’s a known accident black spot.

“But nothing’s going to bring Brianna back.

“Considering we’ve had no cold snap yet there can’t be a problem with reserves of grit and it can’t be a financial thing, so yes they should have gritted.

“And if they had maybe Brianna would have been able to stop.”

A spokesman for Highways England, who are responsible for gritting the A23 and its slip roads, told The Argus although microclimates can see patches of the county dip below the estimated temperatures the decision was taken not to send out gritters.

He added: “There is no budgetary constraints that come into it.

“People are responsible for winter projects – which is essentially gritting – and they will have discussions three times a day with our version of the Met Office looking at the weather forecast covering each of the roads we’re responsible for.

“So it could be, for example, a road is gritted for 20 miles and then not gritted for the next 20 miles.

“On Sunday, we were told it would be 2.2C overnight and there is a collaborative decision made after that between us and the Met Office.

“It’s a tried and tested system.”

The reason given for the early call not to grit was so that trucks - if needed - can be loaded and prepared for dumping the salts ahead of any freezing or frost.

But West Sussex County Councillor Peter Griffiths, whose patch includes the stretch of the A23, thinks the problem is bigger than ice and grit.

He said: “The road goes through a piece of countryside that needs to be altered.

“It rises too quickly and turns too sharply and in addition the condition of the road is absolutely appalling.

“Whichever way you go, the horizon is very short and the sliproads are too short so the drivers don’t have time to make a decision especially for northbound traffic.

“They seem to hit the road after coming onto the sliproad and think they’re open and then they hit a sharp turn going at a fast pace.”

With the high saturation levels given the wet start to January coupled with the nature of the road, Cllr Griffiths believes the stretch is an accident waiting to happen, and criticised Highways England.

He added: “It was promised in 1992 and we were told when the new A23 piece was put in around Albourne it would be resurfaced – but they still haven’t done it.

“The quick solution is new tarmac on there and the long-term layout is they need a complete restructure.”

The A23 as a whole has a higher injury rate from car crashes than the national average, though there are no imminent plans for it to be improved.

A Highways England spokesman said: “In terms of the way it generally works, we receive the statistics for RTCs from all sections of the network and we’re made aware of the severity and the number of fatalities across the route.

“Areas that have a higher level proportionally of road traffic collisions, they are ones that are our priorities.

“That’s us working with the information we receive.

“We monitor them constantly and see if there is any way we can mitigate through extra signage, or white lining or anything else that might help.

“If it’s a more challenging issue with changes and amendments to structure needed for the road it can take a bit longer, and I can see the A23 is being monitored.

“But we would monitor any road even if it fell way below the average road traffic collision rate.”