Calls for action as spate of crashes on Peterborough road leave young girl ‘terrified’ to play in her garden
Residents have called for safety measures to be implemented on a road near Peterborough which has seen cars enter gardens on multiple occasions.
Those living on and around Stonebridge Corner, between Thorney and Whittlesey, met with local councillors and Peterborough City Council officers recently to voice their concerns around dangerous driving.
Rebecca Guy moved into her home on Stonebridge Corner, near Thorney Dyke, in 2020 and claimed that several vehicles had crashed into her garden since due to drivers speeding on Whittlesey Road and losing control on the bend.
“We’ve had some really bad ones. My neighbour had a car come through that was only stopped by the concrete patio that surrounds the properties,” she said.
“My daughter, who is now 12, freezes if she hears screeching brakes on that corner. She very rarely goes out in the garden because she is terrified a car is going to come through.”
Ms Guy said that three cars had crashed at her property in the past 10 weeks, with one taking out around 12 feet of her fence.
She and others have raised the issue with the city council, which is responsible for the road, but are yet to see any successful preventative measures put in place.
“Are they waiting for someone that lives in one of those homes or someone in the vehicle to die in my garden or my neighbour’s garden?” Ms Guy added.
Ms Guy would like to see some measures put in place to deter people from speeding in the area, including a speed limit reduction, speed bumps, improved signage and mobile speed cameras.
The city council previously invested in chevron signs and resurfacing the road at Stonebridge Corner, but Ms Guy said the problem persists.
A Peterborough City Council spokesperson said: “We’ve done some previous works to improve safety at the junction but are listening to residents and councillors concerns and have taken their feedback onboard and are now considering what additional measures could be implemented and will be discussing this further with the group.
“This will be looked at alongside other requests the council receives for Road Safety Traffic Calming and other measures, which need also to include the police and other partners, such as the combined authority and police and crime commissioner.”
Eye, Thorney and Newborough ward councillor Mark Ormston, who was at the Stonebridge Corner meeting last month, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “What we want to do is get additional measures in there to mitigate against it, so rumble strips and this sort of thing.
“I personally think the bend also needs widening because when I was standing there the lorries were cutting over. On one side of the road you can’t see the bollards because they’ve all been knocked over by lorries.
“My understanding is that someone has died there in the last few years. It feels like only a matter of time because people keep losing control of their vehicle.”