Home Page Haverhill News

Another ‘Schools Speed Watch’ on Wratting Road was conducted yesterday between 11am and 12pm, by police working with year six pupils from Westfields Primary School.

In the hour a total of six cars were stopped for speeding. Five of the drivers were given the option to speak with the children, be issued three points on their licence or be sent on the awareness course.

Unsurprisingly, they all chose to speak with the children. Those five then had to answer tough questions such as “What would you have done if you had hit me?” and “Why are you speeding and putting our lives at risk?”.

All the drivers that spoke to the children approved of the initiative. With comments like “It’s a brilliant idea” and “This experience will stick with me for a very long time”, it was clear a valuable lesson had been learnt.

This was even more obvious when one of the drivers, after speaking with the children, got back into their car. She needed to take a moment to compose herself before continuing her journey.

Having kids herself this hard-hitting message she received made her reflect on her actions and she was quite upset over the whole ordeal.

The sixth car that was stopped had no insurance, police dealt with this offence robustly and positive action was taken.

The children also designed road safety posters to distribute and the Safer Neighbourhood Team are looking into funding to get these made into road signs.

Organiser PCSO Mark Isaac said: "This event is the second one I have organised of this nature. It was just as much of a success as the last and it’s great to work alongside the young children again.

"The speeding motorists that were caught were given a very hard time being questioned by the children. The message delivered by the children is arguably better, with a more lasting impact than issuing points.

"All officers involved saw that speaking with the children really had a significant effect on the drivers.

Officers involved from Haverhill Safer Neighbourhood Team were PCSO Isaac, PCSO Steven Ridpath and PC Will Wright. They also had the support from the St Edmundbury Rural South Safer Neighbourhood Team - PC Trish Sinclair and PCSO Sophie Mitchell.

They now hope to take this operation into the rural areas and target locations that have speeding issues.