Signage work to stop large vehicles going to Scarborough narrow streets
Signage is going to be improved in an area of Scarborough to stop crashes from happening due to its narrow streets.
Signage is going to be improved in an area of Scarborough to stop crashes from happening due to its narrow streets.
North Yorkshire County Council is set to address the issue in the Old Town particularly on Longwestgate, Castlegate and Princess Street.
It is after an incident yesterday involving a lorry, parked cars and a pedestrian, resulting in a woman being taken to hospital with serious injuries.
County Councillor Janet Jefferson, who represents Castle Division, said:
"We have been inundated with large vehicles, commercial vehicles, in measures of 20, 30 and 40 foot, who go along here on a direction of a sat nav, they get to the bottom of the junction, try to turn right and of course, they can't turn in any way at all.
"This is really, really serious. These types of things happen on a regular basis and normally affecting buildings, they get damaged, but if you try and navigate Longwestgate, you realise halfway along that you're not going to be able to get anywhere. There was one before Christmas that had to do a full reverse which was frightening.
"I got straight on to our highways department of area 3 and we're progressing now of improved signage from paradise, from the seafront and say from where the market area is. We cannot have these very large vehicles coming down these narrow streets.
"The thing we've got to look at with the signage, we don't want to restrict the residents who live here because yes, you've got to have deliveries and you've got to move house but if people are expecting large deliveries, then these could be booked on a system and we can remove the residents' parking for a short period of time.
"Some of these vehicles, we don't know why they're cutting through, we don't know whether it's for a delivery or whether in their minds if they've come from Manchester or Leeds, they might think it's a shortcut down tot he seafront. It isn't a shortcut. It's a death trap for our residents that might be walking along.
"The fact that this lorry has come down Longwestgate, as it's accessed it, it should have arose the moment they got into the area that they couldn't do anything. They can't turn when they get to the end, they can't turn in the middle of the road either. They can't turn and they can't reverse.
"The sat nav companies, well you'd think they'd study where some of these areas are, or we can have some of these flashing signs where we get restrictions on miles per hour, or maybe we could have a sign that says 'no high-sided, no large vehicles' but the majority of them aren't looking at these things that are there."