Speeding clampdown at accident blackspot

May 2 2009 By Nick Lavigueur

MORE speed cameras are to patrol a Holme Valley accident blackspot.

In three years up to 2008 the A616 Woodhead Road between Berry Brow and Honley has seen seven bad accidents and 10 people seriously hurt.

There have also been 10 ‘slight’ accidents resulting in 17 minor injuries.

Now, although the road already has several speed cameras, another three new traps are set to be added to the notorious two-mile stretch of road.

A Kirklees Highways spokesman said the new cameras should be in place by the end of June and were being put up at the request of the casualty reduction team to improve safety on the road.

Green Party leader, Clr Andrew Cooper, whose ward borders the road, said: "It’s been identified by the police and highways department as somewhere of high risk.

"I have seen cars which have gone through walls there so it’s not as if it’s not an accident blackspot.

"Just because nobody’s been killed there doesn’t mean they won’t be in the future.

"People go through the first camera at 30 and then they speed up to 40.

"People are speeding up, they have got a free run all the way up to Berry Brow, they can build up quite a speed."

The new cameras are only a few hundred metres from the controversial Brockholes camera at the centre of a high profile court case last year.

Couple Vikki and Iain Fielden were left with £15,000 court costs – 250 times their original fine – after their appeal against a speeding fine from the fixed camera on New Mill Road in Brockholes was rejected at Bradford Crown Court.

Mrs Fielden, 49, had originally been fined £60 and given three penalty points after the speed camera clocked her doing 36mph in a 30mph zone on June 4, 2006.

The husband and wife team challenged the accuracy of the controversial camera on the basis that it was on a bend.