A mum who launched a safety campaign after her baby son was involved in a hit-and-run crash outside their home in Wooburn Green has asked why the village has been “abandoned” – because still nothing has been done more than a year later.
Laura Barker launched a petition for extra safety measures on Wycombe Lane in September 2020 after her son Peter, who was aged 21 months at the time, was involved in a hit-and-run while he was in his dad’s car outside their home.
The driver of the other vehicle involved was reportedly speeding and did not stop at the scene, with Laura saying they had noticed a “huge increase” in drivers breaking the 30mph speed limit in the two years before the accident.
The petition called for better speed management systems to be put in place because the one speed camera is “simply not adequate to control the increasing number of speeding vehicles on our long road which is now being used as a racetrack”, Laura said.
But 16 months on, and with Peter now aged three, still nothing has been done, despite the efforts of local councillors Stuart Wilson and Sophie Kayani.
Laura has now written to the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police and Beaconsfield MP Joy Morrissey, saying she was “saddened” that people living along Wycombe Lane are still faced with the same issues.
In her email, which is set to be discussed by councillors on the Wooburn and Bourne End Parish Council planning and highways committee on March 2, Laura said: “We have met with the parish council, I have spent weeks researching reasonably-costed safety measures and proposed small business plans for possible solutions, I have met Joy Morrissey in the summer (who was verbally extremely supportive), I have featured on the radio with my son and it has been featured in the Bucks Free Press.
“I have had the support of Thames Valley Police and yet over 16 months later, our village is in a worse situation than before.”
She added that even now, her son – now three – is “regularly subjected to cars mounting our pavements through the village at high speed since lockdowns ceased”.
She wrote: “And this… on a road where primary school children and prams walk to school and back daily. The speed at which these cars travel is not only in excess of the 30mph limit, it is in excess of 55mph on many occasions. I know this as I have undertaken a simple speed test with two markers and a stopwatch.
“Our village community wants to work together with you to make this happen, we want to have the speed measuring equipment we so desperately need to run a Speed Watch campaign, we want the lights to be updated at the village zebra crossing (and the one replaced that was taken down when a car crashed onto the pavement and knocked it down months ago) so cars do not speed across them when parents with prams are on the actual crossing.
“We want a speed reduction with 20mph speed limit at set hours when Wooburn Green Primary School children are entering and exiting the school.
“We want something done before there is a tragic accident that makes national headlines involving an innocent child.
“I would like to ask why our village of Wooburn Green has been abandoned in terms of pedestrian safety when other areas in Buckinghamshire have sufficient safety measures in place for their villagers and especially their children?”
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