Residents call for speed humps on Stella Road
Concerned resident, Malcom Greyling said 10 accidents have caused damage to his property while his neighbour was affected by five accidents.
STELLA Road residents are desperate to put an end to the frequent accidents that occur on that stretch of road and have called upon the municipality to install traffic calming measures. In a thread of e-mails sent during September 2015, resident Malcolm Greyling, highlighted the importance of the matter.
While the e-mail gave details about just one accident that occurred along Stella Road, Greyling, who has been living in the area since 1985, said there have been many more accidents and a few which directly involved his property, some coming close to even injuring him and his family. “It all started in February 1992 when a drunk driver crashed into my house at 9.45pm and took out our driveway gates, five sections of our concrete boundary wall and ended up hanging over our inside retaining wall. The red two litre courier van had three 20 litre containers filled with petrol in it. A piece from the boundary wall flew all the way through my lounge window and landed next to me as I was sitting on the floor in the lounge studying,” said Greyling.
The accident was reported to the local police, however, he said that this resulted in no conviction. The next major incident was on Saturday, 26 June 2010 when another car flipped over and landed upside down in his yard after hitting the barrier at a high speed. The driver of this vehicle fled the scene. “There was severe damage to the boundary wall, poles and barb wire fencing. If it was not for the barrier, the hedge, concrete wall and the shrubs we had planted there, this car would have landed in my, at the time, 15-year-old son’s bedroom,” he added. He said that these car crashes have all been in a 50m radius of the corner of Stella Road, where Pentrelew Road begins.
Greyling said a shocking count of 10 accidents have caused damage to his property while his neighbour was affected by five. One of the accidents also claimed the life of a driver. “The accidents have also caused damage to the corner house on Pentrelew Road many times. So in this 50m radius over the years since 1992 to now, over 40 car and bike crashes have occurred. Since my first experience of this, I have been trying to get some response from the relevant departments to put something in place to physically slow down cars,” said Greyling.
Silkwood Gardens resident, Monique Wells, said that the recent accident that happened inside their complex was proof that an intervention is needed urgently. “I was inside the house at around 4pm when I heard a loud screech and then a thud. When I went outside to have a look, two young men emerged from the car. Within seconds, the engine was alight,” she explained.
She added that the car’s occupants were uninjured and lucky to be alive. “The car was just centimetres from my neighbour’s bedroom window. Eye witnesses said that the car was speeding and the driver lost control of his vehicle. This is the fourth bad accident in a space of the 10 years that I’ve lived here,” said Wells.
The eThekwini Municipality said that the installation of humps is prioritised using Council’s Traffic Calming policy and that all requests throughout the city are assessed using the same methodology. “The installation of humps are programme based on the output from that assessment. Stella Road is a very long road which serves various communities and its function varies over its length which affects its assessment such as providing primary access to an industrial area. Part of Stella Road has speed humps. The road will be assessed to determine the requirement of additional humps to be installed,” said eThekwini head of communications, Tozi Mthethwa.
