A Malbank School pupil was injured after being in collision with a car near the school entrance in Nantwich.
The incident happened as pupils were leaving the school to go home at around 3.15pm today (January 30).
Police and paramedics were called to the scene where the boy was found to have suffered minor injuries.
The accident involved a white Citroen C3, Cheshire Police say.
Police added that the injured youngster was taken to Leighton Hospital for treatment by his parents.
(pic courtesy of Nantwich News reader)
The 3 o’clock mayhem is bad enough, but now parents waiting to collect older children are sitting outside the school on the double yellow lines, forcing drivers going southbound into oncoming traffic and blocking the view of drivers leaving the school and turning right. HL07VKR was sitting there when we went past going into Nantwich and was still sitting there ten minutes later when we passed again!
Curiously, there’s now an automatic speed measurement device on the Waterlode extension, yet despite this, and the occasional speed enforcement by CSOs using a portable speed measurement device, there hasn’t been a single serious or fatal collision on this road since it was opened in January 2005 – not one. This can be verified at crashmap.co.uk, which displays all fatal and injury collisions in the UK since 2000.
Interestingly, alleged speed offences on this road couldn’t be lawfully prosecuted on this road before December 2017, because it wasn’t established lawfully until that time, and as far as I’m aware, the 85th percentile speed is well over 30mph, so enforcement won’t affect drivers’ speeds anyway.
The school can certainly issue guidelines as that’s a real joke, what a bad example to set, just park anywhere, what does that teach the young?
I’m glad that no serious injury was caused to the Malbank School pupil as a consequence of this collision, but this was inevitable given that cars park outside the school on the double yellow lines waiting for their children up to half an hour before the school finishes for the day. If Cheshire Police community support officers (CSOs) attend to discourage this, then of course no-one parks: when they don’t, it’s mayhem, and official Cheshire Police policy is that they do not enforce Local Traffic Order parking contraventions, and will not prosecute wilful obstruction of the highway – even when photographic evidence and a statement is provided – unless it has been reported via 101 and a CSO has attended.
There’s nothing whatsoever in law to prevent an offer of a fixed penalty or a prosecution, so we must assume that this policy is simply a matter of not having the resources to prosecute these offences… an adverse consequence of ten years of austerity. So let’s all hope that the next accident doesn’t involve serious injury or even worse.
The incident happened around 50 yards away from the malbank entrance. The child ran into the road chasing his friend and got hit. I saw it happen.