'Grand Prix of lorries' causes disruption to small Maidstone village

KentOnline / KMTV

Locals have described how speeding lorries and vehicles on Heath Road in Boughton Monchelsea have caused them loss of sleep and even shaken their homes.  Finn Macdiarmid reports.

Transcript

00:00Locals living on Heath Road in Bortonmont, Chelsea near Maidstone usually expect it to

00:04be a quiet area, with only a farm shop and a goat sanctuary nearby. But locals say that

00:09lorries going down the 30 mile an hour road faster than they should is creating a nightmare,

00:15disrupting their sleep and their peace and quiet.

00:17Certainly down the end of the road, where there's crossroads, five ways, two articulated

00:25lorries can't get past each other, so everybody has to back up, which is ridiculous for, well,

00:32it's supposed to be a B road, but it's treated as an A road. There's traffic along here, particularly

00:38now that there's roadworks along the Loos Road and the Linton Hill, it's just ridiculous.

00:46As you can see, to be honest, we don't normally get this amount of traffic, but it is just

00:51ridiculous.

00:53Now they say they're being treated to a Grand Prix of lorries. Constant noise, which

00:58is keeping them awake and even shaking their houses. And you can't quite see it from here,

01:04but just behind me there's a long queue of traffic. This is probably the first time I've

01:08ever heard people saying they actually like the traffic because it slows these lorries

01:13down. So how bad must the noise be for them to actually like having traffic in their area?

01:19One local has even taken matters into his own hands to understand just how fast the vehicles

01:23are going. The first thing I did was to obtain a calibrated camera from the parish council,

01:29which was provided by the police, just to get a bit of an objective measure as to actually,

01:35you know, what does this speeding constitute? What are the actual numbers? That filming was

01:40done about 10, 15. From about 11 onwards, you know, it may as well be a drag strip because

01:46sometimes lorries are clocked going past at 60 miles an hour, which is double the speed limit

01:51and dangerous driving. In terms of a solution, local councillors aren't giving up, coming

01:55up with ideas they're trying to get passed by officials. We're trying to put either a speed

02:01bump or even paint showing people that they really need to slow down. And we would like

02:08a SID, a speed indicator device, actually showing people at what speed they are doing and with

02:13a smiley face and a dance face so they're actually aware of what they're doing because often they're

02:18just following the traffic and not realising at what speed they're going at.

02:21Police Sergeant Paul Cook said in response to concerns raised by residents of Boughton,

02:27Monchelsea, local beat officers have been carrying out high visibility patrols to act

02:31as a deterrent for speeding and other traffic offences. We will continue to proactively target

02:35those who put other road users at risk and urge motorists to drive responsibly to protect

02:39themselves and others. Speed limits are limits, not targets. Until a permanent solution is found,

02:45local residents will have to hope that the lorries will keep to their speed and that it won't be a

02:49long road until the problem is fixed. Finn McDermid in Boughton, Monchelsea for KMTV

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