The village magazine, Maxey Life, has consistently argued that the village suffers from a poor road safety strategy. Previous editors have campaigned for additional traffic calming measures designed to slow down through traffic and for an increased police presence on our local roads.

Until recently the argument whether Maxey had a problem of speeding divers or not was one based on perception rather than fact. In essence, there was no statistical evidence to prove how many vehicles travelling through the village did so above the speed limit of 30 mph.

In a single hour between 5.15 pm and 6.15 pm the Operation Speedwatch team monitored 205 vehicles on the High Street heading towards the roundabout on the A15. They recorded the highest speed across all sessions here at 53 mph with a consistent 20% of all drivers exceeding 33 mph.

A joint initiative - Operation Speedwatch - between Cambridgeshire Police, the Parish Council and a group of volunteers has allowed data to be compiled and analysed so that it will be possible to determine the extent of the problem and then make recommendations as to potential solutions.

Operation Speedwatch involved a number of community volunteers who were trained by the police to deploy a fully calibrated speed detection sign and to record instances of speeding drivers exceeding 33 mph.

The Maxey Speedwatch team ran three sessions on the High Street at different locations and times covering the peak traffic periods in the morning and evening.The speed detection sign was in operation for a total of 2 hours 46 minutes and a total of 425 vehicles were monitored in that period.

This figure was a surprise to everyone and quite beyond any pre-session guesstimates. In fact we had 205 vehicles pass our monitoring post between 5.00 pm and 6.00 pm on Wednesday 15 July 2009.

• 81 vehicles (19%) were recorded as exceeding 33 mph
• 39 vehicles (9%) were recorded as exceeding 37 mph. Those drivers will receive warning letters from the police
• It is likely that drivers exceeding 45 mph will receive a personal visit from the police
• The highest speed recorded was 53 mph!

We expect to conduct the next survey at the beginning of September 2009 and propose monthly sessions through to December 2009. We will be monitoring traffic on West End Road and elsewhere within the village.

As part of the initiative Cambridgeshire Police have run a number of ‘real’ speed checks in the village during and since the initial Operation Speedwatch sessions. A number of drivers have been caught, fined and in-curred penalty points on their licenses.

We would like to recruit some additional participants to the team, preferably residents who are available during the daytime, to give us more cover. If you are interested in helping out please contact John Hickling on 348766 or treasurer@maxeylife.co.uk. We can then organise training and authorisation with the Police.