A CORONER has urged lorry drivers to wear their seatbelts after a series of deaths on Oxfordshire’s roads.

Oxfordshire coroner Nicholas Gardiner spoke out after the inquest on a Belgian lorry driver who died in a crash on the northbound M40 last October.

Mr Gardiner said the case was the fourth he had heard in 18 months where the driver of a large vehicle had died because he was not wearing his seatbelt.

Today’s inquest in Oxford heard that father-of-two Patrick Denblijden lost control of his vehicle between junction five at Stokenchurch and junction six at Lewknor He was thrown from the cab and died from multiple injuries.

Police, who found Mr Denblijden in the undergrowth about 15m from his lorry, said the trucker had not been wearing a seatbelt.

Mr Gardiner, who recorded a verdict of accidental death, said Mr Denblijden would have survived the crash if he had been wearing a saftey belt.

He added: “Most lorry drivers behave sensibly.

“But this is the fourth case in 18 months in which I have had to hear an inquest on a large vehicle driver who was not wearing a seatbelt, has been thrown from his carriage and died as a result.

“Lorry drivers must understand, they may be driving big vehicles but they are not immune from the law of the land or from the laws of physics.

“Mr Denblijden died as a result of an accident and I shall be registering the death as accidental.

“My sympathies go to his family in this loss they have suffered.”

Gerrit Van De Braak, who was driving a silver Scania lorry which then crashed into Mr Denblijden’s vehicle as it lay jack-knifed across the carriageway, said temperatures had been hovering around freezing point.

He added: “There was a lot of snow on the side of the road.

“It was very slippy underfoot.

“I tried to break to avoid having a collision but there was nothing I could do.”

Mr Denblijden’s cousin, Paul Ryder, from Sandy, in Bedfordshire, paid tribute to a ‘popular, lovely’ man.

Speaking after the inquest on behalf of Mr Denblijden’s partner Sabrina Vandwalle, and his brother Andre, who travelled over from the Belgium for the inquest, Mr Ryder said: “He was very much a family man.

“His funeral was attended by hundreds of people, and I think his death even made front page news back home.

“But mainly he did everything for his two children and his partner.

“He lived for them.”

According to Insp Paul Winks, Thames Valley Police’s head of roads policing, in the past 18 months, three other lorry drivers, Ivan Sewell, David Percival, and Patrick Settersfield, have died because they had not been wearing a seatbelt.

Speaking after the inquest, he said: “It goes beyond the simple legality of having to wear a seatbelt, this is a serious road safety issue and the result has been needless deaths.

“The message from these four tragic events is clear – ‘belt up and be safe’.”

awilliams@oxfordmail.co.uk