ROAD rage victims Tina Burnell and her husband Steve have told how they feared they would be forced off the road and killed in a terrifying incident on Sunday afternoon.

Mrs Burnell, 42, her husband Steve, 46, their friend Donna Hamblin and Ms Hamblin's nine-year-old son, Alex, were travelling home along the A4 towards the Pewsham estate at around 4.30pm.

Mr Burnell was driving and they were waiting at the lights at the Gladstone Road junction intending to drive off along the A4 when they were targeted by two Ford Cortina drivers.

As traffic moves off at the junction, two lanes merge into one, but as the Burnells' car pulled away in the right hand land, two mark three Cortinas in the left hand lane pulled ahead of them.

"My husband held back to let the Cortinas go first. But one of the Cortinas, which was yellow, hung back and pulled alongside our car."

Mr Burnell then continued to drive along Avenue la Fleche, but the other motorist, in a brown Cortina, tried to move alongside his car, pushing the car out towards the middle of the road and into oncoming traffic. "It was terrifying," said Mrs Burnell.

"Both of the Cortinas continued to try and pass and tried to cut us up."

At the courthouse roundabout, the brown Cortina once again cut them up and forced them into the wrong lane.

"The driver of the brown Cortina had been gesticulating angrily to us all the way up Avenue la Fleche and as we reached the roundabout I looked over at him I will never forget the look of rage on his face," said Mrs Burnell. "His knuckles looked white on the steering wheel and I honestly thought that he was going to deliberately crash into our car."

The incident left all the passengers distressed and Mrs Burnell suffered an asthma attack immediately after it.

Now she has started a petition to persuade the county council to change the priorities at the set of lights. Howard Greenman, the local Conservative councillor for the Pewsham ward, agreed that there was what he called "a significant problem" at the junction.

He now intends to raise the issue at Chippenham's next council meeting.