Two concerned mums are calling on councillors to take speeding on a notorious road “seriously” after a spate of recent crashes left them fearing for their children’s safety.  

Woodside residents Sarah Hayes and Estella Willems said they were “deeply concerned” by the number of collisions and excessive use of speed on the A405 between Woodside Leisure Park and St Albans Road.

READ MORE: Crashes increasing on dangerous stretch of A405

A pedestrian was hit by a car on the same stretch recently, leading the two parents to worry that a similar fate could befall them or the other local families who walk their children to one of the many nearby schools.

“When that pedestrian got hit it made me think that could have been us,” said Ms Hayes.  

“There are a lot of schools in the area so we don’t want something nasty to happen. After that spate of accidents, we felt we needed to do something about it.

“The councillors have been in power for many years and haven’t done anything. They live in the area so they should know better. We want them to take it seriously and look at what would work best for that road.”

The two mums started a petition calling for Hertfordshire county councillor Derek Scudder to use his highways budget to investigate which speed calming measures would be most suitable for the road.

Leaving paper copies of their petition in neighbourhood shops and knocking on doors, the two women have now collected more than 400 signatures.

Combined with another petition started by Watford borough councillors Tim Williams and Steve Cavinder, which has around 1,000 signatures, Cllr Scudder is armed with significant public backing to present to the county council’s highways panel in February.

And given the recent rise in more serious crashes, he hopes the issue will be treated with added urgency.

He said: “Sooner or later we have got to do something about this road – there is a real potential for danger there.

“There have been a number of injury accidents there so we are hoping it pushes it up the agenda, but we’ve been concerned about it for a while.

“This would be a very major scheme. We will get the highways panel to get the road safety unit to investigate and design a scheme that would do the job.”

The two councillors wants improvements made to the road between the Leavesden Green interchange and St Albans Road, including a pedestrian crossing point at Woodside Leisure Park, improvements to the junction with Greenwood Drive, and increased speed enforcement along the length of the route.