Lucky escape after lorry hits two cars (From Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard)

Lucky escape after lorry hits two parked cars in Cricklade

5:30pm Friday 5th October 2012 in News By Laura Shack

CRICKLADE residents have renewed calls for town centre traffic to be curbed after a heavy goods vehicle smashed into two parked cars.

Access to High Street was temporarily blocked off to traffic on Tuesday after the lorry carrying two skips crashed into parked cars near the town hall and forced them out into the road.

No one was injured in the crash and both parked cars were empty, but the accident has re-fuelled a call for action on the increasing volume of HGVs using the narrow High Street.

Cricklade resident and business association chairman Bob Jones was first on the scene with his wife Tina.

"We heard this huge crash and the lorry had just shunted these two cars out into the road. He wrote off at least two cars and hit three altogether," Bob said.

"We’ve told Highways this was going to happen – Cricklade wasn’t made for that sort of vehicle.

"We were so lucky that there wasn’t a serious injury. You can imagine if someone did get hurt in one of these cars – the uproar it would cause."

Earlier this year more than 500 trucks were recorded within three hours in Cricklade during a lorry watch session by exasperated local residents, who say HGVs pose a danger to pedestrians and are causing their homes to crumble away from the vibrations caused.

It was hoped that the data would strengthen the case for Wiltshire Council to build a bypass or implement a weight restriction to deter HGV drivers from using the Saxon town as a trunk route.

Cricklade town council vice chairman Gina Chapman said this latest accident was unlikely to prompt action because no injuries were reported.

"Thankfully nobody was hurt but that means it won’t show on the Highways Agency’s incident list, so unfortunately it won’t help our case," she said.

"This is the problem we’ve got with big HGVs coming through and the 20 miles per hour speed limit not being enforced – you can’t even park your car on the High Street without a lorry taking you out."

"With waste going to Purton, more quarry sites and 1,700 homes planned at Tadpole Farm we’re going to get an increase in HGVs, not a decrease.