Highway officers are warning motorists that roads in Oxfordshire will not always be gritted with salt in icy conditions.

Budget constraints mean that only major routes can be treated - and sometimes the weather changes unexpectedly.

In a recent incident, Kathleen Gidlow, of Witney, spun dangerously across the town's Curbridge Road as she started out for work at 7am. "My car hit black ice and spun around twice in the middle of the road. The car then mounted the grass verge where I continued to spin until I ended up alongside the hedge," she said

She was on her way from Sherbourne Road, Witney, to her job as a primary school teacher in Wiltshire - a 29-mile drive.

"This has made me very nervous as I now know I wasn't the only one to have an accident that day before the grit finally arrived," she added.

Curbridge Road is part of the A4095, a main cross-country route from Witney to Bampton and Faringdon.

According to Martin Turner, county highways engineer at the Witney depot, motorists who were involved in the many accidents that day were caught out by the weather forecast.

"The Meteorological Office had predicted a temperature of plus four for the night, well above freezing. But it was not until 5am that we received notification that it had dropped below freezing," said Mr Turner.

"With that timescale, it was difficult to get the salting runs out. A lot of roads did not get done."

The county's highways department also only targets main traffic routes. "We can't do all the roads. We don't have that sort of budget," added Mr Turner.