Siward Road sits in Bromley town between Bickley and Bromley South train stations, and has a 30mph limit.
Susannah Miller, 49, has lived on Siward Road for 11 years with her husband Donald, 50.
The couple said that the wide nature of the road and lack of on-street parking has encouraged the issue of drivers showing a ‘general disregard’ towards speed limits in the area.
Ms Miller told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “When kids are going to school, people are trying to get their children into cars.
“That’s the terrifying bit because it only takes one small lapse of concentration and there’s an incident. We have had a car shunted onto the pavement, and people could have been seriously hurt… There was another incident where somebody’s front garden wall was absolutely demolished.”
She added: “I had a walk around the neighbourhood the other day, came back and I’m steeling myself for this street and the speed and I’m just hoping that nothing happens. It’s just so unpleasant to live in that environment all the time.”
Ms Miller claimed she has continuously raised the issue with Bromley Council since 2019, but was told in an automated response that the authority prioritises locations with a high number of injury collisions in the past three years.
She said that the council has added a roundabout and speed activated sign to the street, but the measures have done little to improve the issue and it appears the problem is now being passed between the authority and the police.
She said: “They are both saying it’s the other one’s job. So the council says if it’s about speeding then the police should be enforcing. Clearly they don’t have the resources to be here all the time.
“Then the police say they can only do so much and that it’s the council that needs to make amendments to the road to slow the traffic down.”
Ms Miller said she and her husband bought a radar speed gun to measure speeds on the road and were ‘astonished’ by the results.
The couple claimed that out of 900 journeys they observed, 40 per cent of drivers were going above the 30mph speed limit, with 12 per cent exceeding 35mph. The resident said they have even recorded speeds of up to 75mph several times a week.
Ms Miller suspects some of the speeding may originate from frustrated drivers queuing for the nearby Waldo Road Reuse and Recycling Centre.
She added that locals understand the pressures in place for council finances, but that they would welcome any sort of measures on the road that would solve the issue.
Ms Miller told the LDRS: “The irony of it all is if people did slow down, it would feel safer. People would walk and cycle more and then everybody’s journey would be better too, including the motorists. It is frustrating.”
A survey commissioned by Bromley Lib Dems in June last year across Siward Road, Homesdale Road, Gundulph Road and Godwin Road found 97 per cent of respondents were worried about speed on roads in their area. The survey was reportedly filled in by 44 per cent of households on the included streets.
Mr Miller said he has always felt uneasy about speeding on the road and has been amazed by the number of children that live on the street. He said the area is lucky that there has not been a serious accident yet and he has started having to park his car closer to his house in order to feel safer.
Mr Miller said: “There have been so many close calls.. The mental health impact is just constant and it wears on you. You hold your breath when you go for a walk literally until you get off of this road.”
Residents also claimed to have had their wing mirrors knocked off on several occasions. Rosie Hallett, 59, has lived on the road since 2000 and said her household experiences stress ‘every day’ from speeding on the road.
The local said she has heard drivers shouting at each other on the road as early as 7am and that both of her family’s cars have been hit while they were parked on the street. She claimed she has noticed more and more of her neighbours having their gardens paved to eliminate the danger of their children getting out onto the road.
Ms Hallett told the LDRS: “I really feel for the people with small children on this street, it must be just a permanent worry… It feels very clear that the motorist is the most important person in Bromley, and I just don’t feel very good about living in a place like that, when I feel like the rest of the world is moving on.”
A Met Police spokesperson told the LDRS: “Local officers from the Bromley Town Safer Neighbourhoods Team continue to speak with local people and are aware of their ongoing concerns.”
Superintendent Luke Baldock told the LDRS that the police were supported by officers from the Roads and Transport Command team and that the team regularly carry out speeding enforcement operations.
He added that the police were aware of the concerns relating to driving offences in Siward Road.
He said: “Local officers have in turn stepped up efforts to crack down on driving offences in the area including increasing the number of handheld speed guns available and training more officers to use them.
“This means speeding operations and monitoring can be quickly put in place wherever there are concerns.”
Conservative Councillor Nicholas Bennett, executive councillor for transport, highways and road safety for Bromley Council, told the LDRS: “Bromley has a good road safety record and reducing casualties remains central to Bromley’s transport priorities and key to this is targeting our finite resources at locations where collision data shows that we can make a difference.”
The councillor claimed there have been no reported injury collisions on Siward Road between 2021 and 2023. He said the authority would not be taking action on the road in order to prioritise other locations in which collisions had been reported.
Cllr Bennett said: “I use the road regularly and parked cars on both sides of the road mean that cars have to travel slowly and give way to pass but speed enforcement is something the police are responsible for and there appears to be a case for speed enforcement at this location which would help.”
He added: “As with all locations across the borough, we will continue to monitor activity to continue to impact on the downward trend we have seen in collisions where residents have been seriously injured.”
