Access only estate residents are selfish

11:58am Thursday 25th October 2012 in Letters

CONGRATULATIONS to residents of Hallows Avenue/Smith Drive.

These residents, arguably an aging population, have single handedly caused gridlock in the surrounding area. The residents who enforced this will be the same people who will also complain and whinge that they cannot leave their estate caused by the traffic that they are attempting to ban driving through.

While I appreciate their concerns, I cannot accept the presumptious approach by the police. The policeman who stopped me explained what the law was and continued to write out a fine because I was driving through this ‘sacred’ estate. Not once did he ask my purpose for being there nor did he engage in conversation. Once I informed this rude officer that I was viewing a house there the fine was scrapped.

Furthermore, while driving through the estate I was twice shouted at with foul and abusive language for doing just that.

Why aren’t the police arresting these people for their criminal behaviour instead of attempting to slap fines on drivers who are not committing a criminal offence.

Using the four access points through the estate offers welcome relief of traffic allowing motorists to continue their journey smoothly.

Local people use their road knowledge to help ease of congestion. For 30 years myself and many others have used that route to shorten a journey and not one accident (to my knowledge) has occurred. Where does this stop? Will we end up seeing ‘except for access’ signs at the end of all residential roads thus only allowing vehicles to use the main arteries and a roads?

As one of the biggest and fastest growing towns in the UK, these out of touch residents and ridiculous laws will surely see the start of complete gridlock around the town.

Surely locals using their road knowledge to ease congestion around the town is a good thing.

These residents should stop wasting valuable police time, get a hobby and stop being so precious.

DAVE GOODMAN

Fearnhead Lane

Comments(2)

WarringtonResident1 says...
5:37pm Thu 25 Oct 12

Hi David,

The reason an "Access Order" was applied to Smith Drive and Withers Avenue is due to a Road Traffic Collision sadly resulting in the death of a young child. The motorist was a speeding taxi driver who wasn't paying due care or attention and he was jailed for his part. I was a witness to the collision and also part of the subsequent campaign to gain the "Access Order". More recently residents have had cars damaged in hit and run accidents, have been threatened and been spat at, all for just trying to leave their own drive. So where I feel some sympathy for you being fined, I agree that Cheshire Police should enforce the law as they do at other "Access Only" roads in Warrington and the wider borough.

Yours "Selfish" Smith Drive Resident

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gazhopley says...
1:47pm Thu 1 Nov 12

I sympathise for the death of the child but unfortunately incidents can happen on any road, and to make such roads access only would mean making the majority of roads access only which is not feasible nor realistic, there is also a case that those motorists choosing to travel down smith drive may do this at a greater speed so to avoid any confrontation with any police who maybe traveling down the road themselves making smith drive even more dangerous, the increased traffic to hallfields road is a hazard not only to the emergency services as on a number of occasions during the police operation where hallfields road was at gridlock, you have to obviously bear in mind that hallfield road borders orford park which sees more pedestrian and cycle traffic than smith drive, now cross this with the fact that the council's road safety policy doesn't actually have much to do with road safety and you are left with a potential raft of incidents waiting to happen. the only solution is to remove the access only signs and replace them with traffic calming measures to move them into line with EVERY other road where these conditions have applied. It seems when it comes to road safety the one thing both the council and police don't want to use is common sense

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