A teenager died in accident which closed part of the busy A34 for four hours yesterday morning.

Raymond Allen, 17, from Eastleigh in Hampshire, was pronounced dead on arrival at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.

He was a front-seat passenger in a Transit van that was in a collision with a lorry near a layby on the northbound carriageway near Didcot.

Three other people in the van were taken to the hospital for treatment, including the seriously injured driver, and another passenger with a shoulder injury.

A second Transit travelling behind the first van clipped the rear of the lorry, but both its 59-year-old driver and the 33-year-old lorry driver, escaped injury. The road was closed between 6.30am and 10.30am with traffic heading north diverted via Rowstock and Milton Hill.

Anyone with any information about the accident is asked to contact Pc Mark Pilling, of Abingdon police, on 01235 556920.

An hour after the first accident, a tanker lorry and a car were in a collision on the A40 near the Evenlode steakhouse at Eynsham.

No-one was badly hurt, but the accident brought rush-hour traffic to a standstill, with many commuters seeking diversionary routes through the countryside to reach Oxford and the A34.