Road Safety
Ensuring road safety is a priority for Benson Parish Council and as such a road safety working group has been set up with volunteers from the Benson community and led by Cllr Roger Moore. We have successfully implemented a 20mph speed limit throughout the village and installed Speed Indicator Devices (SIDs) at key entry points on Littleworth Road, Watlington Road and Church Road. Brook Street was a new addition this year. SIDs display the speed of approaching vehicles, serving as a deterrent to speeding. Additionally, they collect data on vehicle speeds, which helps us monitor and address speeding issues more effectively.
2026 Update
Benson residents, continue to report their concerns about speeding vehicles and the data from the roadside speed displays is summarised below. Driver behaviour appears to change very little over the months this year and very few drivers make the effort to comply with the 20mph limit while travelling in Benson village.
Watlington road
Excess speed is endemic on Watlington road and virtually no drivers are meeting the 20mph speed limit. Nearly a quarter of road users continue to travel in excess of 40mph, twice the speed limit. Nearly 100% of road users are travelling over 30mph.
Littleworth road
While a very small number of road users are travelling at 20mph, around 94% of vehicles are travelling at 30mph or below.
Church road
Similar to Littleworth road, very few vehicles manage to travel at 20mph but around 95% of vehicles are travelling at 30mph or less.
St Helens avenue
On St Helens avenue, there are more vehicles travelling at or below the 20mph speed limit (8-10%) but there are still a few vehicles travelling at excessive speed but only represent 2% of vehicles.
Brook street
The Brook street speed information sign has only been installed since July and residents have reported their concerns over excessive speed. This is supported by the SID data. Around two thirds of vehicles are travelling over 30mph, despite the parked cars and narrow pavements. Virtually zero vehicles are travelling at the 20mph speed limit.
Action planned
- More roadside SpeedWatch sessions
- Addition traffic monitoring at key points throughout the village.