A69 ACCIDENT BLACKSPOT GETS SPEED CAMERAS

A69 ACCIDENT BLACKSPOT GETS SPEED CAMERAS
Published in The Cumberland News on Friday, May 5th 2006

FATAL: The crash at Low Row in February in which Margaret Bonnar died
FATAL: The crash at Low Row in February in which Margaret Bonnar died
By Dave Gudgeon

FIXED speed cameras are to be installed on the A69 at Low Row, near Brampton – a notorious accident blackspot.

The pair, which will be the first to go up anywhere in north Cumbria, should be in place and operating by the end of this summer.

There have been five fatalities near Low Row since 2001, while 22 people have been seriously injured and another 115 injured slightly in accidents there.

Kevin Tea, communications manager with Cumbria Safety Cameras, said the aim of the cameras – which will cost about £90,000 – was to cut speeds and save lives.

He said: “This is a location where there have been many accidents involving loss of life and serious injuries in the past – and we have been given the go-ahead by the Department of Transport to put cameras there.

“A health and safety assessment is being carried out at the moment to determine the exact location of the cameras and we also have to sort out the logistics of the power supply. They should be in place by late summer.”

Mr Tea said the initial recommendation for the cameras to be sited at Low Row had come from Cumbria police’s traffic management office.

The latest victim of the A69 at Low Row was care worker Margaret Rosalind Bonnar, 53, who died after a collision involving her Peugeot car and a lorry in February.

The mother-of-two – known as Ros – lived at Longbyre, Greenhead, near Brampton, with her second husband George, and had worked at Moot Lodge residential care home in Brampton for the previous six years

As well as her own children, she had three step-children, two grandchildren and two step-grandchildren.

Cumbria’s only fixed speed cameras are in the south and west of the county although there is one a few miles to the east of Low Row at Greenhead. That is in Northumberland.


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