Residents voice safety fears as lorries use street as lay-by

Lorry drivers are using Newhouse Road in Grangemouth as their own personal lay-by - parking up blocking residents in their homes and causing safety concerns

The massive articulated vehicles have been parking up outside homes in Newhouse Road, Grangemouth, while the drivers take a break or go to buy something at the nearby Spar store.

In many cases the drivers have blocked people in their homes and, when they do leave space for residents to take their cars out of their drives, the lack of visibility due to the sheer size of the lorries makes pulling out on to the road dangerous.

Theresa Snedden (73) has lived in the street for four years.

She said: “It’s been going on since 2014 but now it’s just getting beyond a joke. Last Friday I came home from the shops and I couldn’t get in my drive because a lorry was parked in front of it.

“When I asked the driver to move he said he was just having a break and would move off in 10 to 15 minutes.”

Mrs Snedden has been calling the various firms the drivers are hauling goods for to see if the bosses can do anything about it and she has also contacted her local MSP.

She has a white line outside her driveway that people should not park on, or across, but she says lorry drives regularly ignore the road markings.

“They are not bothered where they park. Overnight they park down the road at the car park near the town centre, but in the morning when they start off they come and park here.

“And it can be as early as 5am when they rumble up outside. It’s unreal, you sit here and the house is shaking – and they don’t go passed slowly.

“They shouldn’t be parking across the drives. I can’t see other cars coming when I’m pulling out of my drive. And there are children in the street too who cannot see when they are crossing the road because of the big lorries.”

One of the lorries which blocked Mrs Snedden’s drive recently belonged to Perth haulage firm AM Howie.

A spokesman for the company said: “Our operations manager has informed the drivers to no longer park in the street and we can monitor that via our tracking system. They may have parked there in the past, but we can guarantee none of our drivers will park in that street again.”