Couple say someone will die if speed limit isn’t cut

A COUPLE have warned that someone could be killed due to the dangerous driving outside their home in Remenham.

Timothy and Frances Roche, who live on the A4130 White Hill, say that many drivers break the 60mph speed limit and motorcyclists race each other.

They have witnessed a number of serious crashes after which motorcyclists have been airlifted to hospital.

Cars have ended up in the ditch at the side of the road after swerving to avoid residents pulling out of their driveways in their vehicles.

In addition, speeding lorries cause a draught which pulls residents’ wheelie bins into the road, causing a hazard and sometimes damaging their cars.

Mrs Roche, 61, a saddler, said: “It’s only a matter of time before a person is killed. We’ve been campaigning for years but it seems as though they won’t do something until someone is killed.

“It is brought up by residents at every parish council meeting and we keep being told it’s being looked into. The parish council has been campaigning too.” The Roches, together with their neighbours, have been calling for the speed limit to be cut to 30mph since they moved to Middle Culham Cottages eight years ago and the people who lived in their house previously had been campaigning for a decade before that.

There is a 30mph speed limit on the A4130 further back at Remenham Hill.

In February, Wokingham Borough Council, the highways authority, said it would paint double white lines on the A4130 near the cottages to discourage drivers from overtaking but this hasn’t happened yet. Between September 2012 and July 2018, a total of 25 accidents on White Hill was recorded, nine of them serious.

Eleven of these happened at or within half a mile of the cottages.

There have been at least four crashes, one serious, on Aston Lane and Remenham Lane.

Remenham Parish Council suggested extending the 30mph speed limit on the A4130 to Middle Culham Cottages and lowering the speed limit on the A321 from the A4130 to Conway’s Bridge to 30mph.

Earlier this year, the parish council installed a temporary speed monitor on the road and a council meeting heard that one vehicle had been recorded travelling at 123mph.

Mr Roche, 73, said: “We were told that changing the speed limit was turned down by the borough council on the basis that police couldn’t enforce it.

“What that means, I don’t know. I really can’t understand why the police can’t manage it because the 30mph limit is just a couple hundred metres away.

“It would be simple to move it down and it wouldn’t cost the earth.

“We were told that a double white line would be painted on the road but they haven’t done that yet. There’s this café that motorcyclists gather at to look at motorbikes and they have to pass our house to get there, which is why we hear them every weekend and they turn their silencers off so they can go faster.

“When you’re outside, the noise is horrendous and it rather spoils the countryside.

“The speeding affects us because we’re constantly having to keep an eye on our two dogs. They’re used to the noise but we want to make sure they stay in the house.

“We used to have a lovely Alsatian living next door who got out and was killed by a girl driving past.

“She was in tears after she hit it but that didn’t stop her solicitor from suing the owners for not controlling their dog.”

Darrel Poulos, the Remenham parish councillor responsible for traffic issues, said: “The council has been very active in looking at ways of trying to reduce traffic speed in and out of the village.

“It has been liaising with highways and the police to see what the options are.

“The last I heard was that the first step is to extend the no-passing zone to try to solve the problem of traffic being on the wrong side of the road when vehicles come out of the turns for Culham and Knowl Hill.

“Extending the 30mph might be a bigger hurdle to cross with highways and the police.”