Villagers want lorry ban after HGVs mount kerbs
BBCResidents in a village where heavy lorries regularly mount kerbs to pass each other have called for HGVs to be banned.
Footage filmed by resident Barry Hudston and posted on Facebook shows the heavy goods vehicles being driven onto pavements in Ockbrook, Derbyshire, sometimes just inches from garden walls and fences.
Other villagers said they had repeatedly had the wing mirrors on their cars snapped off by passing lorries, while some parents of children at the local primary school said it was not safe to let their children walk to school.
Derbyshire County Council said it had written to satellite navigation data providers requesting that HGV routes through Ockbrook be avoided.
The village is popular with lorries as it sits close to a slip road onto the A52 which then connects with the M1 a few miles further down.
Barry Hudston said: "It's incredible the danger of the large lorries trying to get down such a narrow road.
"It's not meant for heavy goods vehicles and then when you get perhaps two vehicles trying to pass, some of their cars have to reverse up to let them get through."
His wife Linda Hudston said the situation was "terrifying" and revealed she had previously been knocked off her bike by a lorry.
"We need a restriction for heavy goods vehicles [in Ockbrook]," she said.
"It will have a great impact on our lives and our families' lives that have to put up with our road being a rat-run.
"It's the pollution, the noise and the threat that you're going to die because they come very close."
Georgina Wilkinson lives in the neighbouring village of Borrowash and says the situation is "horrendous" whenever she does the school run for her grandchildren who attend Ockbrook's Redhill Primary School.
"In the morning and at school time when the children are coming to school. It is horrendous," the retired teacher said.
"I've had a wing mirror knocked off. I've knocked somebody else's wing mirror off because of the massive vehicles that were coming down who didn't bother to stop and mounted the pavement.
"I mean, I've been coming along this road for years doing the school run you literally are stopping and starting and weaving in and out, and these lorries are enormous."
Erin Barry, who lives in the centre of Ockbrook, said she has had to replace at least six wing mirrors on her cars and believes they were knocked off by lorries using the narrow street to access the A52.
"Over the past years it's just getting worse and worse," she said.
"It's not safe for me to walk my child to school which is a five-minute walk.
"I would much rather put her in the vehicle and drive to school because you can't trust the lorries. It's not a safe place to be anymore."
Councillor Charlotte Hill, Derbyshire County Council's cabinet member for highways, said: "Road safety is one of our top priorities and we're installing new signage at the junction of Cat and Fiddle Lane [in nearby Dale Abbey] and the A6096 to direct HGVs north-east along the A6096 towards the M1.
"We've agreed this working in conjunction with Derby City Council on a joined-up approach to avoid introducing measures that would move the problem to unsuitable roads elsewhere and we're keeping the situation under review.
"I've also written to satellite navigation data providers requesting that HGV routes through Ockbrook be avoided.
"And I've written to companies operating from the Cat and Fiddle Industrial Estate, asking that HGV traffic associated with their operations avoids travelling through Ockbrook."
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