Mother set to move house after second crash in road

A MOTHER is looking to move house following two car crashes within three months near her home.

Sarah Cumming lives opposite Sonning Primary School in Pound Lane where there was a head-on collision between two cars last month.

One of the vehicles ended up colliding with her garden wall during the incident on November 27.

Mrs Cumming’s childminder had only left the property a few seconds before the crash to pick up her daughter, who is in Year 1 at the school.

She said: “My daughter was at school and my nanny was going to pick her up but she was walking down my drive and she turned around and said she’d forgotten her phone.

“If she hadn’t gone back to get her phone, she would have been in the line of fire. Five minutes later that’s exactly the spot where she would have walked my daughter up the drive.

“This has been an ongoing issue for a couple of years. I think what’s happening is it’s getting busier on that road. There are lots of roadworks going on in surrounding areas that are forcing more traffic down that road and so the road is getting more and more dangerous.

“We need to either have more parking, double yellow lines or traffic lights to slow people down on that road because I think people are frustrated on the school run. You can hear them honking.

“They’re frustrated because it’s not practical how cars are parked on the other side of the road. It means that the cars coming on the other side have to mount the pavements.

“There’s a number of times I’ve tried to cross the road to get to my own house where I haven’t felt safe because the cars always have to mount the pavement to get past.”

This is the second accident in the road in recent months with another crash taking place on Friday, September 20.

Mrs Cumming, who was has lived in the village for eight years, is now planning to move away partly because of her concerns for pedestrian safety. She said: “After this latest accident, I don’t even attempt to walk on that side of the road. I have to cross the road immediately. It makes me very on edge. I was extremely emotional after the incident about the what if, what if it had been five or 10 minutes later and my daughter had been walking on the drive.

“As parents at the school, it makes us very angry. We’re shocked because this is probably the closest it has come to hitting somebody.

“I was always fearful this would happen. Living so close to the school, I see it every day and this for me now is the final straw so something has to be done because I think the next step will be a child could die.”

Sandra Paskins, who also lives in Pound Lane, said the issue of speeding was a problem in the area and she had raised concerns with Wokingham Borough Council. She said: “It is a wider issue of inappropriate speed, which occurs most hours of the day in Pound Lane as people escape from the speed bumps and single file over the bridge.

“They can see that the road opens up and is wider and it’s taken as the opportunity to make up journey time. The hazard with a row of parked cars or someone on the zebra crossing is difficult to perceive or prepare for until you get around the slight bend in the road.

“I have raised road safety concerns with the police, parish council, ward councillors for Wokingham and on the Wokingham website. There are few safe options for parking and drop-off currently.”

Members of Sonning Parish Council and headteacher Phil Sherwood have met with representatives the Wokingham Borough Council highways department and officers from Thames Valley Police.

Trefor Fisher, who chairs the council, said: “We discussed the parking problems and also the safety of the zebra crossing outside the school. We talked about reducing speed limits in Pound Lane, which is where the school entrance is, and I’m waiting for them to come back with some recommendations.

“There have been two quite serious incidents, luckily with no children actually hurt but it did have the potential for children to be hurt. Parking is a problem but if parking is restricted outside the school, it will just push the parking elsewhere and might cause more problems.”