A BLIND woman from Purton died when the car she was travelling in pulled out in front of a speeding lorry.

Frances Verity, 90, of Witfield Close, and her friend Valerie Fitzgerald, 84, of Great Bedwyn, Marlborough, were travelling on the A417 at Birdlip when the accident happened last November.

The reason Mrs Fitzgerald drove out of a side road into the path of the lorry – which was going at 15mph above its speed limit – would never be known, the Gloucester inquest was told yesterday.

But it was clear she had made ‘a bad judgment call’, a coroner ruled.

Ex-RAF servicewomen Mrs Fitzgerald and Mrs Verity died at the scene.

Gloucestershire senior coroner Katy Skerrett was told that although the lorry tractor unit which hit them was doing 55mph, a collision would have happened even if driver Peter Jennings had stuck to the 40mph limit for the vehicle.

Mrs Skerrett recorded conclusions that the two widows – who had known each other since their RAF days together – were the victims of a road traffic collision.

The two ladies had been away for a weekend together and were returning home in Mrs Fitzgerald’s Skoda Fabia at the time tragedy struck.

The inquest heard Mrs Fitzgerald drove along the B4070 from Birdlip to the junction with the A417 intending to turn right, towards Cirencester.

In evidence, Mr Jennings said he had collected the MAN tractor unit that day from Swindon and was taking it to Leeds.

As he approached the B4070 junction on his left, the Skoda pulled out across him, he said.

“I immediately applied my brakes. There was nowhere for me to go to avoid the collision. It was such a short distance between me and the car,” he said.

He said he hit the Skoda and carried on for about 20 yards before stopping at the far side of the junction.

“I got out of the cab but I was fairly shocked and some people in another car took me and sat me down in their vehicle because they could see I was shaken by what happened.”

Witness Alan Burgoyne, who was on the A417 facing east and waiting to turn right at the junction, said: “The lorry driver didn’t have a chance. It all happened so quickly.”

Pathologist Professor Neil Shepherd gave the cause of deaths of both women as multiple injuries.

The coroner said: “Mrs Fitzgerald pulled out of the junction slowly and a collision was inevitable. This led to a tragic outcome – two long term friends losing their lives.”