So Nearly a Tragedy

Early yesterday afternoon we so nearly had a tragedy here in the heart of Winterbourne Stoke on the A303.  I heard the sirens heading along the Berwick road, and more coming up the Devizes road, as I walked on the ridge above the village and it was clear that there had been yet another accident.  The only question was, how bad?

While we are often afflicted with traffic jams, we also suffer from speeding when the road is a little clearer.  Frequently, the culprits are HGV's, racing down the hills on each side of the village, westbound and eastbound though eastbound is worst, to keep up their momentum to let them climb the hill back out of the village.  I don't mean a few miles per hour over the 40 mph speed limit, these HGV's are often travelling at well over 60 and even 70mph, if the Highways Agency's roadside speed monitors are to be believed.

In between times, if the traffic isn't stationary or trying to break the land-speed record, it is merely fast and inconsiderate.  So in every traffic state, trying to turn right onto the A303, out of the one and only access road to the village, can be fraught with danger, or simply incredibly frustrating and time consuming.  When the traffic is stationary, or very slow moving, drivers block the entrance to the village and refuse to let villagers out.  When the traffic is travelling very fast, you can pull out onto a clear road only to have an HGV screaming into view in your rear-view mirror; brakes smoking and horn blaring.  In between these two extremes you get a bit of both.  You can wait for a long, long time for a gap to appear in both lanes of traffic and west-bound drivers, even though they will have had clear site of you waiting patiently for over half a mile, still refuse to let you pull out.  This state of the traffic can be the worst of all and passengers have been known to get out of the car, run down to the crossing in an attempt to create a gap in the traffic.

Then sometimes, just sometimes, you get a nice person who tries to be helpful and let you out of the village onto the A303.  That's what happened yesterday and as a result, an act of kindness so nearly ended in tragedy.

Basically, what happened was this.  A young nanny was trying to leave the village, with two of her young charges in the car.  There was virtually no westbound traffic but a constant stream eastbound.  After waiting some while, a kind eastbound driver in a blue car stopped and beckoned her to pull out.  She made one last check of the road, especially the westbound A303 and when she looked back in preparation to pull out, there was a loud bang and the blue car seemed to have tuned into a silver one and then a big, white HGV, spewing red liquid..  Confused, she hesitated.  Had she pulled out without first checking, things could have ended so differently.  Fortunately, her car was untouched and she was able to reverse back, safely, into the village.

What seems to have happened is this.  The blue car came to a stop and beckoned our driver out of the village.  Further back down the road, and I will make no comment as to the hows and whys of what happened next here,  a large articulated tanker from the Netherlands failed to stop and hit a silver car in the rear.  It was this car that shot forward and into our nanny's field of vision replacing the blue car after hitting it in the rear and, in-turn, being replaced by the HGV.  This is the scene after the emergency services arrived:

The HGV was pretty well beaten up:

The front of the silver car wasn't very pretty either:

However, it was the rear that took the full force of the HGV:

Now, it doesn't seem to have been a very high speed collision,  but whatever combination of speed and distance from the car in front pertained, the lorry driver was unable to stop in time.  The HGV is only three years old, so a relatively new vehicle - unlike many of those that hurtle through.  It doesn't take take much imagination to picture what might have been had one of the leading cars, or the HGV, hit the side of the nanny's car; T-boning it.  Less imagination still to picture the scene if the HGV had been racing into the village as many do - 10mph, 20mph or even 30mph + over the speed limit.

Half-a-dozen people were very lucky yesterday; fortunately with no-one suffering serious injuries.  Yet again, another accident in Winterbourne Stoke shows the unsuitability of the A303 for its purpose as a major strategic route to the West Country and the dangers that the current road poses for the villages that lie alongside the single-carriageway sections of the entire A303/A30/A358 corridor.

This is just one of the reasons why WiSBAng and STAG are campaigning to ensure that the this important road corridor is dualled along its entire length, and as soon as possible.