Motorist drives into hole lotta trouble

nlnews@archant.co.uk
04 February 2010

A MOTORIST drove into a gaping hole in the road after bypassing safety barriers around a construction site.

Engineers from Thames Water had been replacing pipes in Victoria Road, Muswell Hill, when the car nosedived into the hole at 6pm last Wednesday.

The driver escaped unharmed but it took RAC workers two hours to pull the car out.

Resident Stephen Games, a writer of Victoria Road, said he and his neighbours were warned about the works in advance and told not to park their cars outside their homes and that access would be cut off.

He added: "They have put barriers along the pavement so it's obvious for pedestrians that you can't walk across the road and that cars can't park.

"It's clear the driver shouldn't have been in that section. There was a hole and they went down it with their off-side front wheel. It was dark."

He insisted it was not an isolated case, adding: "I've also heard people have been dragging away the 'road closed' signs so they could park."

Contractor [Murphy] has been carrying out pipe replacement work on behalf of [Thames Water] for the last three weeks.

A Thames Water spokeswoman said: "We regret this incident and we are carrying out investigations to understand how it happened and to ensure there are no repeats.

"The road was closed. There were clear 'no access' signs and the perimeter of the road was fenced off. This happened out of work hours and was not reported for two days."

She said extra fencing had been erected at each end of the street as an added precaution.