News / Urgent call for Levenwick road improvements
A CALL for urgent improvements to “the worst part of Shetland’s main road” have been made after an articulated truck rolled down an embankment at teatime on Monday.
The Garriock Brothers low loader carrying a 25 tonne digger tumbled down the steep bank just south of the A970’s north junction for the village of Levenwick, in Shetland’s south mainland, at around 4.30pm.
No one was injured, but Shetland Islands Council was forced to close the main road for most of Tuesday to allow Garriocks to retrieve the vehicle as a safety measure, due to the number of drivers stopping to look.
Local councillor Allison Duncan said he had predicted such an accident would happen years ago, adding that this narrow section of road with a blind summit is the most dangerous part of Shetland’s main spinal route from Sumburgh to Hillswick.
He said a survey carried out five years ago showed that 15 per cent of vehicles at that section exceeded the 60mph speed limit, and the average speed was 66mph.
There have been regular accidents at this site and even more near misses, with two trucks carrying rock armouring to Sumburgh airport last year almost leaving the road at the same site, according to local people.
“What happened on Monday was very scary and we have to do something before another accident happens, God forbid,” Duncan said.
“Yun’s the worst piece of main road throughout Shetland, so we will have to speak among the councillors and ask the roads department if they can find the money to do something.”
Local crofter David Smith whose field the truck ended up in said he was in his house when the accident happened.
“I thought it was thunder, and then I started to see the vehicles slowing up on the road,” he said.
“Various vehicles have come down that embankment over the years, it’s simply down to the narrowness of the road, and it’s a serious place to go over, it’s very steep.”
In 2010 the council costed improvements to widen the road, strengthen the verge and remove the blind summit at £257,000.
However the SIC currently has a moratorium on any capital spending outside of the new Lerwick secondary school, so the project has never gone ahead.
Smith suggested the council could at least place a barrier on the side of the road to make it safer.
“That piece of road has been on the council list for years. If they don’t have the money to widen it then something at least needs to be done to discourage vehicles from going over the edge,” he said.
The road reopened around 5pm after closing in the late morning, forcing vehicles to take diversions along single track roads through Levenwick or Scousburgh.
SIC roads manager Neil Hutchison said they would have preferred to wait until Sunday when traffic was lighter, but they had to go ahead immediately for safety reasons.
“Drivers were stopping to have a look at the vehicle, so we thought it was important for safety reasons to get it done straight away,” he said.
“If people are stopping there’s the potential for a collision. It’s been inconvenient for people to use a single track road but we had little choice but to go ahead.”
No reason for the accident has been given and the police will be sending a report to the procurator fiscal.
However councillor Duncan said that photographs of the accident showed that only the wheels on the truck’s trailer had mud on them, suggesting it was the trailer that slid off the verge first.
He added that he has never seen so much water lying on the ground in the south mainland as this week, and believed that the verge would have been so sodden it would not have been able to take any weight from a vehicle.
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