102mph on Forty Foot

POLICE have charged a motorist caught travelling at 102mph on the riverside road between Ramsey and Chatteris which claimed five lives in six weeks last winter.

The driver is due before magistrates on November 14.

"The speed limit is 50 miles per hour," said Pc Mick McCready, casualty reduction officer for Cambridgeshire Police. "That's the limit - it's as simple as that."

Huntingdonshire district councillor Ray Powell said he had heard reports of some motorists driving along the Forty Foot road at speeds of between 80 and 100 miles per hour.

Police have been monitoring the road following 28 injury accidents along the 7.5 km stretch over five years, 19 of them involving excessive speed.

Last December father and son Dean and Jordan Hawes, aged 27 and seven, died when their car left the road and crashed into the drain, and in February three Portuguese factory workers died along the same stretch of road.

News of the prosecution leaked just days after Cambridgeshire County Council revealed that it is to buy hundreds of 'life hammers' to give away free at fire stations for motorists who use waterside roads each day.

The life hammer - a lightweight tool designed to make escaping from a submerged vehicle easier - is part of a £13,000 education campaign launched by the council.

The council will also consider in December spending £400,000 on average speed cameras alongside the Forty Foot to enforce the 50mph limit.

n The Hunts Post and thousands of its readers have been campaigning since February for average speed cameras along the Forty Foot Bank Road. In a poll on The Hunts Post website, readers have called for the speed limit to be reduced to 30mph, an overtaking ban and street lighting.