A 2,500 signature petition to reduce the speed limit on a notorious stretch of road is to be handed in to the Highways Agency.

The petition calls for the speed limit along the A449 Worcester road to be reduced from 70mph to 50mph in places, and also asks for additional safety measures to be installed.

The road, currently managed by the Highways Agency, was due to be handed over to Worcestershire County Council at the beginning of July, but that has now been delayed until August 1 and that date too could change.

A Highways Agency spokesman said it was "very much an aim" to complete the handover then, but said he could not guarantee it would happen.

He said the process has been delayed because all of the partners involved need to be consulted and orders will have to be opened up for public consultation.

The petition was started after Worcester girls Joanne Bibby, aged 17, and Stephanie Goodall, 16, and Droitwich teenagers Kyle Gadsby and Martyn Pickering, both aged 18, died when the car they were travelling in hit a tree near Hawford in December.

Since then, two more people - Ian Ballard, a 49-year-old farmer from Abberley, near Stourport-on-Severn, and Michael Phillips, a 41-year-old of Villiers Road, Kidderminster - have also died at similar locations on the A449, while there have also been a number of lucky escapes.

Jim Turner, headteacher of King's Hawford School, Hawford, near Worcester, who helped start the petition, said he did not want to wait until the road was detrunked before he handed the petition in because he "owed it" to people who had put their signatures on it.

"When the road is detrunked we will resubmit it to the county council," he said.

Mr Turner said he was hopeful the petition, which has also been posted on the Prime Minister's website, will achieve its aims.

"The frustration has been once the Highways Agency decided to detrunk the road and didn't give a date for doing it there has been a period of uncertainty," he said. "We're just waiting for the time the county council takes this on because we will know who to address and that person will be accountable to the local electorate."