MOTORISTS who drive at high speed through Rockwell Green have come under fire from residents who fear a child could be killed.

Neal Dodge, who lives in Greenway Road at the junction of the road through the village, says he has had four cats killed by vehicles and fears a youngster could be next.

He said: “You have the kids from Court Fields School walking home and Rockwell Green Primary School – there’s so many kids in this area. In the summer holidays you see them around on their scooters and bikes. One day, God forbid, I shall be shocked but not surprised if someone doesn’t get hit.”

Mr Dodge found one of his cats dead in a hedge last Monday evening after it had been missing two weeks – he said it had injuries consistent with being hit by a car. He had also lost a cat in December and about six weeks before another cat – a neighbour had told him a driver swerved to hit it.

Mr Dodge, who has lived in his home since 2011, said he had lost another cat hit by a car about four years ago and that a black van had crashed into the wall of his house about six months ago before being driven off. He said in another incident a driver had overshot the bridge 100 metres from his home and the vehicle had ended up in a back garden.

He said drivers tackled about their speed had been abusive and added: “It’s a 30mph limit and I have seen cars doing easily 45-50mph and motorbikes sometimes faster. I have had a real beef with speeding for quite a while but it has got worse over the last couple of years – it is not a race track, it’s a residential area.”

Neighbour Jon Cribb backed up Mr Dodge and said speeding was a constant problem – and wondered if traffic calming either side of the Greenway Road junction may provide a solution.

He said: “I was upstairs in the attic with the window open at about 3am a couple of weeks ago and I heard a couple of cars about two minutes apart go past at about 70mph. You hear motorbikes about half a mile before they get here and they go thumping past. Drivers come round the corner, see it’s a straight all the way to the railway bridge and treat it as such. They believe if they can see it, they can anticipate no-one’s going to be around.”

Wellington North town councillor Andrew Govier said he has written to Somerset County Council to ask if speed monitoring equipment can be installed to check the speed of traffic in the area.

He added: “This is the first step to assessing the scale of the problem. Once this survey is undertaken, we can look at what measures could be taken to deal with any problems identified.”

He added that speeding is becoming more of a problem in the town – he had received other complaints from Tonedale, Swains Lane and North Street in the last month.