A family in Wiltshire who live on an ultimate ‘crash corner’ fear they will wake up to find a dead body in their garden after a series of incidents.
Stuart and Sarah Robinson have endured dozens of car smashes – and at least eight vehicles ended up in their garden after careering through their hedge and fence.
They have lived on the A429 in Corston, Malmesbury, for over twelve years – and cars are constantly crashing on a bend outside.
The cars have sometimes burst into flames – and have to be removed by a crane. But despite at least eight vehicles smashing through their hedge – they aren’t planning a move.
Sarah, 46, says she wants to protect her family from incoming vehicles, but she can’t bring herself to install a crash barrier or stone wall.
She says a barrier would likely kill anyone travelling in a vehicle that hits it at high speed.
Instead, the family keep replacing the laurel hedge and fence every time it’s destroyed in a crash – which helps slow vehicles on impact but is unlikely to result in death.
Sarah said: “You’re either going to kill a hedge or kill a person. If we put in a wall or a bollard, they’re going to die and that’s on us.
”So we can’t take more preventative measures ourselves.”
In March this year, two separate road traffic collisions sent cars into their garden, leaving the wrecked motors next to their children’s swing and trampoline.
Thankfully, they happened at night when kids Niah, 12, and Bonnie, 9, were safely tucked up in bed.
But the family fear they may not always be so lucky, scared that one day a vehicle will plough through the boundary whilst their youngsters are playing outside.
In 2019, two crashes happened in the same week – with just five days between them.
In one of the incidents, a a driver narrowly avoided being speared in the face by a fence post that penetrated his windscreen on impact.
In 2016, the Robinson’s hedge was damaged by fire after a car went up in flames following a head-on collision on the corner outside their home.
In October 2011 and October 2014, cars ploughed through their fence and came to rest in the garden.
On another occasion, in 2012, two years after they moved in, a young woman smashed her car into the garden narrowly missing children’s play equipment.
The car has to be removed with a crane.
At the time, the family were away in Manchester and were informed about the incident when they returned home to neighbours’ tales of the overnight ordeal.
The A429 stretch is a 30mph zone, but that doesn’t stop some motorists from speeding through the village.
Some of the collisions were a result of drink driving, or suspected drink driving.
Stuart, also 46, wants the local council to do more to prevent bad driving – including flashing speed signs and white ‘welcome to the village’ gates.
He said: “Our neighbour has lived here for over 30 years and she doesn’t recall there being a whole host of accidents, so it’s only really since we moved in.
“Maybe there’s more traffic – the council did do an official traffic count a few years ago and there are over 10,000 vehicles a day go past. We knew it was busy, but we didn’t realise it was that busy.
“During lockdown, there was less traffic so that helped us. It probably gave us a false sense of comfort actually.”
Sarah has attended council meetings regarding the issue, asking for various measures to be implemented in a bid to reduce the number of serious incidents.
She said: “I went to lots of highways meetings with the local parish council, told them what’s happened and told them what we wanted – which was speed reduction measures coming into the village.
“Eventually, after lots of back and forth, they did come out and look at the road. They said they have a finite pot of money, and they have roads where people are dying and roads where people aren’t.
”It’s a fair enough response, you have to do what you have to do.
“They put on three separate arrows on the bridge [on the corner], which took a long time because apparently it’s a very pretty bridge and there was a lot of pushback about how it would look – which was outrageous.
“Going forward I would like to have rumble strips going into the village, just as an indicator for anyone speeding.
“We don’t have the white gates as you come into the village, where a lot of the smaller villages do – yet they don’t have the same volume of traffic.”
Stuart believes flashing speed signs could help people realise they’re speeding through a village, causing them to slow – regardless of whether they are drink driving or not.
“It’s a comfortable 30mph bend, so if you’re doing 30mph, even if you’re drunk, chances are you’re not going to go through someone’s hedge, through a fence and deep into their garden”, he added.
“If someone’s coming through the village a 60 and they’ve seen flashing signs, they might not slow to 30, but they’ll probably get closer to it.
“People fly through here. We were out waiting for the police the other night and people were flying through the village.”
Sarah is worried that one night, they’ll be met with an even more distressing scene.
“One day we’ll turn up to that car in the middle of the night and they’ll be someone who hasn’t survived the crash and we’ll have to deal with that [trauma].
“I was gardening on Sunday and when a lorry came through, I felt unsafe there. There’s a big gap in the hedge now and I could see it coming towards me, and I just thought what if he doesn’t stop?”
Stuart added: “I said to the police, I work in finance, I’m not trained to hold someone’s hand as they bleed out in my garden.
“I’m fortunate, despite all these accidents, to never have had that experience. But one day we might, and it might not be us, it might be the kids that come across it. That’ll be horrific for them.
“I think the most frustrating thing is, it’s like it’s not a black spot that needs attention until someone gets seriously injured or dies.
“My message to the council is: Don’t wait until someone has died. Preempt it, do something now to try and avoid it.
“I don’t want to be speaking about it in three years’ time saying we’ve been campaigning for safety measures for years but nobody did anything about it and as a result, someone’s died.”
Wiltshire Council’s Cabinet Member for Highways, Cllr Dr Mark McClelland said: “The local highways team is visiting this location to investigate further and review sign and road marking conditions to understand if they meet our intervention criteria.”
