The speed limit has been reduced on a stretch of road where two cyclists were killed by a careless driver. 

A campaign was launched to lower the speed limit on a portion of the A40 between West Wycombe and Studley Green in a bid to stop drivers using the 60mph road as a "racetrack". 

More than 1,700 people urged Transport for Buckinghamshire to take action after "great friends", cyclists Damien Natale and Andy Coles were both killed in a horror car crash near the Old Dashwood Hill junction, on June 1, 2020.

The injuries suffered by Andy, 56, and Damien, 52, when driver Clifford Rennie smashed into them from behind on the A40 in Studley Green were so serious, they died at the scene.

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Rennie, 61, of Wantage Road in Wallingford, was on November 12, 2021, given a suspended jail sentence for two counts of causing death by careless driving and banned from the road for five years.

At just before 6.40pm on June 1 last year, friends Andy and Damien, from Haddenham, were cycling on the A40 in Studley Green, a national speed limit road.

Rennie, who was driving a Volkswagen Golf and travelling in the same direction, collided with them from behind.

Bucks Free Press: Main photo: Clifford RennieMain photo: Clifford Rennie

After a long police investigation, Rennie was charged with causing their deaths on July 15 this year.

He pleaded guilty to both crimes at High Wycombe Magistrates' Court on October 14, sparing the pair's devastated loved ones from a painful trial.

Now, after more than a year of campaigning, backed by Cllr Darren Hayday, Transport for Bucks has lowered the speed limit from 60mph to 50mph on the section between West Wycombe and Studley Green village.

New road signs and 50 markings on the road have been put in this week.

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Cllr Hayday is now looking at the possibility of getting average speed cameras installed to help enforce the new limit. 

Transport for Bucks said the introduction of the 50mph speed limit is for "avoiding danger to persons or other traffic using the road or any other road or for preventing the likelihood of any such danger arising"/ 

There have been a string of crashes on the busy A-road which joins Stokenchurch and West Wycombe. 

Before the death of Andy and Damien, High Wycombe motorcyclist Wlodzimierz Kasper Owicz, 32, was killed in a crash with a car on the A40 Oxford Road in Piddington on August 3, 2018.