THE body of a tragic city worker lay undiscovered for 10 hours on a central reservation after a fatal car crash, an inquest heard. James Board, 29, from Bordon had ploughed his car into heavy vegetation off the Hog's Back dual carriageway, during the middle of the night accident. His vehicle lay buried in the undergrowth the hearing was told, as hundreds of unwitting motorists drove past. Mr Broad, was driving home following a late shift in Canary Wharf when he lost control of his Peugeot 307 at 2am and smashed into a tree. But it lay undiscovered until midday, when a passing driver stopped and alerted the police. Emergency services rushed to the scene on January 27 this year and found the driver door had been ripped off and air bags inflated. Mr Broad had died of multiple injuries. At the inquest on Thursday, August 3, Coroner Kirin Englehart recorded the cause of death as accidental because she said there was no evidence to suggest why Mr Broad lost control of his car. The Surrey Coroners Court heard that Mr Broad – who worked as an IT engineer – had no alcohol or drugs in his blood, there were no technical problems with his Peugeot and the weather conditions had been good. His wife of five years Angeline said that he phoned her from work at 10.30pm the night, before the crash and he was in a happy mood. Pc Geoffrey Burgess said the dual carriageway is separated by a central reservation with thick vegetation and has a 60mph speed limit and no streetlighting. He said tyre mark evidence shows the Peugeot left the edge of the road onto a grass verge and rotated before the side of the car collided with a tree. He said the vegetation was particularly dense at the scene of the accident on the A31, just before the Puttenham turn off. The inquest heard that another car with a damaged bumper had been recovered nearby at 3am and a man was arrested for drink driving. But Pc Burgess said: "We conducted a number of enquiries, but we were unable to link the two incidents together. "There were no physical matches between any samples taken from any vehicle." He concluded: "We can only surmise in absence of any other information that the vehicle left the road because of what could be any number of reasons. "It could have been perhaps an animal crossing the road that Mr Broad reacted to. "It could have been driver fatigue or simple driver error. "We have no way of saying what the actual reason was." Coroner Englehart, following her ruling, said: "I extend my condolences particularly to Mrs Broad, but off course to all of Mr Broad's friends and family."
