Road safety in the village
On the afternoon of Thursday October 13th a white Ford Fiesta travelling from Wilmslow back to Mottram was turning right into Wilmslow Old Road when it was struck on the passenger side by a black BMW 3-series travelling towards Wilmslow from Prestbury. In the Fiesta were three young Ukrainian women, one of whom had only arrived here with her three daughters two weeks previously. The car is a write-off. Miraculously they all survived but the newest arrival has been left with a fractured eye socket and may require facial surgery. The driver of the BMW was unhurt.
My reason for writing to you all (and please share this information with any friends or neighbours not on my circulation list) is to make you aware of the problems at that junction. Last Wednesday I arranged a meeting at the crash site with a member of Cheshire East’s road safety team. Also in attendance, at my request, was Roger Taylor-Jackson, whose farm fields and hedges often end up with cars in them which have misjudged the bend. Twelve months ago, in another accident, the warning chevrons on the grass triangle were demolished, and Cheshire East have still not replaced them. The person I met with checked the road surface by running his hand over it and declared it to be “polished”. He said that in damp conditions, a car travelling even within the speed limit, would struggle to stop.
I am now campaigning for improvements to the junction. There are many things that can be done, including changing priorities, adding a right turn-only lane, resurfacing the road, adding more warning signs and even reducing the speed limit to 40mph (it is currently 50mph). You can help me by writing to Cheshire East at the address below and demanding that something be done. I have supplied the address below.
I spoke with a witness this morning who recently posted on Facebook that the BMW driver was “a maniac driving at around 60mph”. Of course, there is no empirical evidence to support this, but if measures at that junction were in place to prevent speeding and to make drivers more aware of the dangers, perhaps this accident could have been avoided. To flee a war zone and end up in hospital anyway is a tragic turn of events that I never want to see repeated.
Please help if you can.
Kind regards, and best wishes from Kath and me.
Highways
Floor 6
Delamere House
Delamere Street Crewe
Cheshire
CW1 2LL
Robert Hughes
Chairman
Mottram St Andrew Parish Council
