This campaign is designed to ask the Police / Local Council to reduce the speed of a dangerous stretch of road between Great Stainton and the Petty Nook junction to Sadberge and to ask them to use mobile speed cameras and other checks to back up the data I can provide. 

At the moment this stretch of road has a National speed limit of 60 miles per hour, which is great if people actually did that or below, unfortunately many don’t, but they also do this knowing that they can do whatever speed they like as they won’t get stopped.

This is unsafe for all other Road users in cars, tractors, on bikes or on horses. Earlier this year on a section of road very near to this one a lady was thrown from her horse and sadly her horse lost its life, this was due to dangerous driving, this is not acceptable.

After having a specialist speed survey done the results of this are quite shocking. In one week alone 1106 people drove this stretch of road with speeds from 65 of up to 99 miles per hour, some of these in the middle of the afternoon when people are driving, walking, cycling or hacking out on horses. 

There have been several other speed surveys done since mine, which will back up my data.

Now this stretch of road is clearly in need of a reduction in speed it fills all of the government criteria for it to be reduced to 50 miles per hour, with many bends in the road, many entrances to farms etc, on this stretch alone 2 separate crash barriers have been installed already, so what does that tell you?

All I keep hearing is it is a police training road? So does that mean or matter?

Darlington Borough Council Highways have the data for this road and know the high speeds, so why does this section of road never have any mobile speed cameras or actual checks on it? 

• Is it because it’s a rural road?
• Nobody is sure who should police it?
• Why for example does the road to Broken Scar always have speed checks?
• Is it that our local MP doesn’t realise or care?
• Are there not funds for this?
• Is it easy to ignore if nobody complains?

*** Months later DBC highways still haven’t contacted the police about this. I have spoken to our ward councillor, emailed our local MP and still not one speed check has been done *** 

This is one of the main roads into Darlington. It is a proven fact that more accidents and fatalities happen on rural roads.

Most people assume that if you were a fatality in a car it would be on a motorway not a rural road, this is incorrect.

Even yesterday afternoon there was another accident on this stretch of road. Several times in the past couple of years alone cars have ended up in fields along this stretch of road. This is dangerous for all road users and terrifying for livestock in the fields, it also costs money for local farmers to repair broken fencing.

At Petty Nook again there have been various accidents in the past year, always because people don’t slow down.

I personally know 3 people who have had accidents on this stretch of road, all whose vehicles were write offs.

Now let’s put the figures of the speed survey into perspective, if all of the people doing between 66 and 99 miles per hour had received fines for speeding this would of paid for an extra policeman plus their overtime for a year, that’s in just one week.

This proves nobody can say there isn’t the money to monitor this, the revenue from this is huge.

The speed cameras aren’t being requested to catch out people driving safely it’s to make sure everyone is safe on this stretch of road with the huge percentage of dangerous drivers.

Another issue that we have is all of the rubbish thrown from cars, now you would assume most of it would be fast food wrappers etc, but as someone who picks rubbish up from outside their house and the stretch of road opposite, I can tell you that at least half is alcohol bottles or cans, which creates a whole different side to speeding drivers, speeding and drunk drivers! 

Does it take someone to die on this stretch of road before any action will be taken?

This road is used by many on the commute to work, but also by many cyclists and horse riders, these are our family’s and loved ones, do you want them to be safe on our roads? How can they be safe on a road with this high level of dangerous driving?

Thank you for reading. 

Please take a minute to sign ✍️ this and make our roads safer