FOUR members of a family - including a newlywed couple - have died after a head-on crash on a road dubbed the most dangerous in the North.

It has emerged two men, aged 58 and 63, and two women, aged 57 and 60, travelling towards the coast in a Suzuki car died at the scene following a collision with a lorry and another car near a sharp bend on the A64 at Scampston Bridge, outside Rillington, in Ryedale, North Yorkshire.

North Yorkshire coast and moors landscape artist Joy Green and her long-serving council conservation officer husband Derek, who had worked in Whitby for many years, had been returning from a wedding in Leeds with the bride and groom.

Circumstances surrounding the incident at 3.40pm on Friday remain unclear, but police said the 26-year-old man driving the lorry and a motorist driving a Honda Jazz car were uninjured.

In a tribute on Facebook, Joy and Derek Green's daughter Melanie Ann said: "I know a great many people loved my parents, they were amazing, wonderful, weird people, they opened their hearts to the entire world. They were my world."

Police issued an appeal for witnesses, hours before reporting another serious crash on the road near Flaxton, between a heavy goods vehicle and a car, at 4.25pm yesterday. It remains unclear how many people were injured in the collision.

The Scampston Bridge incident, which follows a five-car pile-up in which a 87-year-old driver died in February and a collision between a car and a lorry in December, both at the same spot, look set to reignite demands for a bypass in the area.

A bypass was first suggested before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and a route south of Rillington was pegged out but, with the outbreak of the war, it was abandoned.

There have been 24 deaths on the road since 2010, but in December police figures revealed fatalities on the road had dramatically fallen, leading to Whitby and Scarborough MP and then transport minister Robert Goodwill to suggest vehicle safety improvements, coupled with improved road markings and driver’s attitudes were behind the drop.

North Yorkshire Police said its partnership with Highways England and the introduction of central barrier reflectors to reduce accidents caused through loss of control, had also contributed to the fall in serious accidents.

Councillor David Jeffels said the notorious stretch of road needed extra road safety measures.

He added: "The road isn't capable of coping with with the volume of traffic. People find they can't overtake and there is a lot of frustration."