CONSERVATIVES SUPPORT SPEEDING CRACKDOWN

Speeding motorists are the scourge of many villages and communities and rarely does a Parish Council meeting go by without the topic being discussed. Speeding is a contributory factor in many road accidents and is the single biggest cause of road deaths. Now Conservative Councillors have joined forces with the police and Neighbourhood Panels to launch a new Speedwatch initiative. The aim is to work with and involve local communities and help them tackle the speeding problem in their area in order to make their roads safer.

The police provide local communities with the equipment to carry out speed checks on problem roads. If speeding is found to be an issue, a range of measures will be considered from police warning letters to speeding motorists, to the provision of signs or other engineering solutions. It is hoped that by involving the whole community in this way we will be able to make our roads safer.

Thirty Parishes in East Cambridgeshire have already joined the scheme, with 19 volunteers signed up to undertake speed checks.Generally the areas to be targeted are identified at Neighbourhood Panel meetings.

Woodditton County Councillor, Mathew Shuter, was one of the first to get involved in the south of the District when speed checks were undertaken in Bottisham. He said: "We all know that speeding is a problem in many of our villages and some people drive with a complete disregard for the speed limit. We had a particular problem during commuter rush hour times on routes in and out of Bottisham and through Woodditton, Brinkley and Burrough Green where local villagers got together to undertake a speed check. During the morning rush hour in Brinkley over 130 vehicles passed the Speedwatch camera and 20 of those were recorded breaking the 30mph speed limit. The evening period provided similar information with 30 vehicles recorded at speeds of over 36mph and two of those recorded were over 50 mph.

8th May 2009