Community Speedwatch

For the past few weeks, we’ve been joined by the Met Transport policing team on community speedwatch on Higham Hill Road, Blackhorse Lane and Priory Court. It’s been both eye opening and terrifying.

First of all, we’d like to thank PC Andrew Coker and his colleagues for taking the time to work with us to send a message that speeding is never acceptable. As a result of us being by the side of Higham Hill Road for one hour, we caught over 30 drivers breaking the 20 mph speed limit. What’s more, most drivers that went past us noticeably slowed down when they saw our hi-viz jackets. If we weren’t there, the majority of drivers on Higham Hill Road would probably have been breaking the law.

A narrow residential road with two primary schools and numerous small businesses is no place for speeding through traffic. That’s why we need safer streets in Higham Hill and Lloyd Park.

Here’s what local residents are saying:

• “I drove with my mum last week on Billet doing 20, we got aggressively honked at by one car and dangerously overtaken by a second (nearly taking out the car coming the other way).”

• “When my kids were little I had to fling one of them to safety from a speeding driver on wrong side of road, straight through a zebra, and I had to sit on a drunk driver to stop them driving off in the car they'd used to total four cars and nearly kill my son, both in Higham Hill. I've lost count of the near misses and hair raising moments I've had in the area.”

In the past month, there have been two traffic incidents in or around Higham Hill. We fear that it’s only a matter of time before there’s a serious injury or death. If you see speeding or antisocial driving, take a note of the time, location and number plate and report it on the Met website, and they’ll use it to decide where to allocate resources. In the meantime, we’ll be doing more Community Speedwatch, but these are temporary solutions. We can’t patrol all of the streets all of the time. Our roads need to be safe by design.

It’s great that our local councillors have joined us on these sessions and we’re looking forward to hear what else they can do to help make our streets more people-friendly.

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