Another serious crash at ‘extremely dangerous’ junction reignites calls for action

A dramatic crash at an ‘extremely dangerous’ junction in Fifield has caused serious damage to a community hall – fuelling renewed demand from neighbours for a solution.

On Tuesday, August 26 at about 11pm, several neighbours witnessed a car smashing through a fence and colliding hard with the porch of Braywood Memorial Hall.

The hall – where Bray Parish Council meetings are held, among other community events – is at the four-way junction of Fifield Road, Forest Green Road and Oakley Green Road.

The junction connects a number of fast roads and is poorly lit. As such, concerns about it have been flagged for many years. It is notorious for hairy incidents, including a ‘serious’ crash in June.

This sparked calls for change from one community group in particular, OGAFA (Oakley Green, Fifield & District Community Association).

Now the junction is in the spotlight again after another crash which has left Braywood Memorial Hall’s porch ‘badly damaged.’

Emily MacPherson, a neighbour, said she heard the driver colliding with the building with ‘a lot of force.’

The car smashed through the fence, careered through the car park into an area with an electric substation, and nearly ended in up in a private driveway.

“It was absolutely awful,” Emily said. “The noise was horrendous. It’s something you never get over.”

Unexpectedly, when Emily went out to help, the driver and his passengers appeared to be fine. The car, however, was badly crumpled up.

The memorial hall was cracked and the collision left ‘an absolute mess’ in the hall car park. Wood and glass also flew over the boundaries and ended up in neighbouring gardens.

Emily witnessed the June incident, too – a collision involving an HGV with a horse box and two cars which had to be written off, she said.

“We get a lot of accidents – it’s absolutely constant around here,” said Emily. “We’re nervous now. We’re thinking, ‘When is the next one going to happen?’”

“Just the speeding is shocking. At about 1am [that night] we heard someone sped down the road – they could see that there’d been an accident, and they just carried on."

Emily worries that with the fencing down, there will be nothing to stop drivers crashing into neighbours’ driveways and damaging their parked cars.

“Something definitely needs to change,” said Emily. “[That junction] needs something that makes people have to stop and slow down – a speed [table], or a speed camera.”

Residents say people unfamiliar with the junction think it is just a straight road and put their foot down.

Barbara Frame from OGAFCA said there was ‘quite considerable damage’ to the memorial hall, which had to be closed for a few days.

“The front porch has been taken out completely,” she said. “We’ve had to board up the front of the building.

 “Luckily, we’ve managed to arrange access through an emergency exit at the back, but the hall is full of glass and debris.

“Thankfully there was nobody in the hall and nobody driving past at the time. The repercussions could have been very, very serious.

“Miraculously, the driver wasn’t hurt, but if he’d hit another vehicle, I think there would have been a tragedy.”

Barbara continued: “Obviously, this redoubles our call for a roundabout at that junction. It’s such a dangerous junction.”

^{Alison Brayshaw, Cllr Suzanne Cross, and Clare Stuart-Adams at the problem junction}

Cllr Suzanne Cross, who is both a parish and RBWM councillor, agrees, believing it is the speed limit of the roads that feed into the junction that is problematic.

The RBWM safety manager has been asked to establish the cause of the accident and report back to her and Cllr Geoff Hill, cabinet member for highways, she said.

Cllr Hill said the council must wait for the outcome of this before taking any further action.

“We’d be very foolish to dive in and start trying to make changes to the junction before we know what the cause of the accident is,” he said.

“I do believe that there’s been driver error [in previous incidents] at that junction. It’s not an easy junction.

“The police have to do their investigations, and we have to do ours. It takes a few months. We’ll just have to wait and see what these reports bring out.”