Two car accident deaths in one week sparks speed camera plea
It has been revealed that a town in Wales has urged their local government to spend money on more speed cameras in the area, after a string of car accidents.
Residents have called for additional visualising monitors so that the crash black spot, which has killed two more people in the last week alone, will be made safer.
An 18-year-old Welsh high jumper was killed last Monday and a 26-year-old man was killed in the early hours of yesterday morning on Sealand Road, in Deeside, around 500 yards from the previous scene.
Locals cry out for safety measures
Businesswoman Christine Price, who works just yards from the scene of the latest tragedy, said many now want to see the speed limit on the road cut from 60mph to 40mph, to reduce accident claims.
She stated that there’s a gentle bend on one section of the road that some drivers fail to treat as cautiously as they ought to.
Mrs Price, 60, who runs a Hotel, said: “It happened right by our second gate just on the bend and that’s where he seems to have gone off the road. There was also a fatal accident there around four years ago. I’ve been talking to the customers today and most of them say the speed limit should be reduced.”
Local Flintshire councillor Christine Jones is also worried about such incidents of speeding along the A548 road, which for most of its two-mile length between Queensferry and Chester is a 60mph straight single carriageway.
She is calling for extra speed cameras on the road, which she says was icy and covered in mud from nearby farms at the time of the latest accident at 3.45am yesterday morning. Currently, the road is policed by only one speed camera – at Blacon, in Chester.
In the latest incident a red MG ZR left the road and hit a tree. The driver died from severe injuries. Mrs Jones, 50, said: “They speed along that section, trying to overtake one another.
“They’re young lads in their cars, but not just young lads because I’ve seen all age groups doing it. They shoot along there with no sense of safety and because it’s such a long stretch it’s easy to build up speed.” Mrs Jones will hand in a letter to Flintshire County Council’s highway’s department today calling for more cameras.
A spokesperson for North Wales Police said: “The male driver was pronounced dead at the scene. The car is thought to have left the road and collided with a tree.”
Flintshire County Council’s transport spokesman Tony Sharps, responded they will wait for the outcome of the accident investigation before deciding whether to take any action.
He said: “We need to know the reasons why the accident has happened and if it is the fault of the road then we’ll do something about it. We have to look into the details of it.”
Statistics from Road Safety Wales reveals that 1 in 7 fatal car accidents occur in Wales; other figures go as high as 1 in 6. 1 in 14 serious accidents happen in Wales; other figures go as high as 1 in 11; and a range of between 1 in 14 or 1 in 25 slight accidents occur in the country.