A barrier over a steeply-sloping road must be removed before another life is lost, according to a family grieving from the death of a ten-year-old girl earlier this year.

Government responded yesterday by announcing plans to modify the hurdle at Southampton’s Tribe Road No 1, which was the scene of a devastating accident on January 11. Tiffanelle Pitcher-Francis became this year’s second road fatality while cycling with a group of children, after she struck her head at high speed while ducking under the metal barrier.

“It hasn’t happened again, thank God, but you still have children playing there, dare devilling themselves to go underneath it with their bikes,” Tiffanelle’s grandfather, David Madeiros, told The Royal Gazette. “It needs to go. There’s no reason for it to be there.

“They say it’s to stop speeders from going that way when the police are after them, but that sounds like baloney to me — if they’re going to try and escape the police, they will use any method they can, and there are lots of ways to go around there.

“I would like to see it come down, because parents can’t watch their children 24-7, even if they would like to.”

He was adamant that, despite the widespread shock after the accident, children were continuing to dodge the barrier. “Children aged 12 and under don’t think like adults,” he said.

Tiffanelle was new to the neighbourhood when the accident claimed her life, on the narrow and sharply descending path that runs between a switchback of Camp Hill Road near her home in Warwick.

Mr Madeiros said she’d only recently recovered from a fractured leg, sustained when she was struck by a vehicle a few months earlier.

“My other granddaughter was there, and she said the speed she was going when she came down the hill there, she couldn’t control it.

“I just believe the next child that makes this mistake, it’s going to be fatal again. I don’t see why it has to be another life lost before we do something. One human being is already too much.”

He said that devastated mother Tiffany Pitcher is still struggling to cope with the loss of “a quiet, really good child”.

“You would have to know her to believe what I’m saying — she was a perfect little human being, never a troublemaker.

“She always did what she was told and tried hard to be polite to people. The world lost a really good person.”

Directly after the accident, Ms Pitcher called for the barrier to be removed or altered, or at least for a warning sign to be put up.

Homes adjoin the Tribe Road, which is open at the top to allow residents access with their cars.

The sturdy barrier at the bottom includes a horizontal metal bar high enough for a small bike to fit under.

In the aftermath of the accident, a Public Works spokesman said the barrier’s design was standard, but said the Ministry was willing to examine “how these barriers may be made even safer, perhaps with adding a diagonal bar”.

Area MP Jeff Sousa is closely familiar with the site: his business, Sousa’s Landscape Management, is right beside the barrier.

“This was a very, very unfortunate freak accident — we lost a very gifted young lady, and we have to do what we can to honour her life,” Mr Sousa said. “My heart goes out to the family.”

However, he cautioned that Tiffanelle’s death appeared to have occurred under unusual circumstances.

“To be straight up with you, I personally have never seen children coming off that hill on their bikes.

“I’m not disagreeing with the family; I’m just saying it was a freak accident from what I can see.”

In response to questions from this newspaper, a Government spokesman said: “The Ministry of Public Works can advise that the plan is to put a cross brace on the barrier.

“The Ministry cannot remove the barrier as it would mean that people could speed down the Tribe Road and come into conflict with users on the Railway Trail. The Ministry is also planning to put another barrier further up the Tribe Road.”