NASTY CRASH ON ST ALBANS AVENUE

Too much speed and too little room lead to multi-car collision

Last Thursday evening, St. Albans Avenue was the venue for a three car pile up. Fortunately no one was injured.

A car with three young men travelling north up the road veered into the parked cars when it strove to avoid a car travelling south. All the occupants of the travelling cars were severely shocked.

The force of the impact first hit a new Peugeot so hard, it mounted the pavement and collided with an Audi parked in front of it. Distraught owners poured into the road while a mass exchanging of insurance details took place.

St. Albans is unfortunately used as a cut-through from South Parade to Southfields Road. It is a narrow and windy road and extreme caution is needed to negotiate it as it is impossible to see far enough ahead to take avoiding action if another car is coming at speed from the opposite direction. Although visibility is better at night when headlights mean an approaching car can be spotted earlier, the road is completely full of parked cars necessitating one of the cars to reverse quite extensive distances.

Residents of St. Albans Avenue are adept at reversing large distances to allow cars to pass each other. They are also well-versed at casting filthy looks at those drivers who seem oblivious to the dangers of exceeding 20 mph on the road.

Residents remain unconvinced of the benefits of speed humps: any houses next to the humps would suffer increased noise. Another solution mooted has been putting bollards across the road. This would stop the road being a rat-run at some inconvenience to the residents.

September 8, 2002