A NOTORIOUS accident hot spot in Padiham will be the venue for a staged car crash this month.

Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, as well as police and ambulance works will use shock tactics to drive home vital road safety messages.

In the past three days alone there was two fatal accidents in Burnley and Nelson.

Waqar Zulfiqar, 20, of Sackville Street, Brierfield, died on Barden Lane early yesterday morning. And on Saturday, 27-year-old biker Jon Glover, of Bolton Road West, Ramsbottom was killed on Halifax Road, Nelson.

The staged crash on Tuesday, June 29, is on Burnley Road, Padiham, at the junction of Kidrow Lane and Byron Street.

Actors from Accrington and Rossendale College will play casualties, while emergency service staff will play themselves.

The action will start at 10.30am, with casualties cut from the wreckage by firefighters and attended to by paramedics, including the Lancashire Air Ambulance.

The event, organised by Burnley Community Safety Partnership, is to raise awareness of the carnage caused each year by reckless driving, excess speed and drink-driving.

Sergeant Martin Bishop, chair of the partnership's road safety action group, said: "Last year, 95 people lost their lives on Lancashire's roads, 13 of them in Pennine Division. This is a terrible toll. If we can prevent one death by staging this accident, then we will have achieved a great deal."

Station officer Shaun Naughton, of Burnley fire station, added: "It is essential that we get road safety messages firmly onto the agenda for all road users and pedestrians."