Frustrated man spends £8k making ‘shortest road in the country with speed bumps’

A frustrated pensioner who spent £8k on putting speed bumps on his street ended up creating Britain's shortest speed bumped road.

Adrian Kent of Whitstable, Kent, used to have a dirt road covered in stones outside his house, which caused all sorts of problems when fast moving cars and even lorries hurtled past his home.

Cars racing down a dirt road is naturally going to kick up a whole bunch of stones, and when you combine that with people living nearby, it's a recipe for disaster.

People were being hit by stones flung up by the cars and at one point a car window was smashed.

Eventually deciding to do something about it, Kent reached a point where he thought the best solution was to tarmac over the stretch of road outside and install speed bumps.

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Explaining his predicament, Kent said drivers hadn't been respecting the conditions of the dirt road, sending stones flying everywhere and making his grandchildren too scared to play outside.

He said: "People were happy to tear down it at 30 to 40mph. A neighbour's car window was smashed by stones flicking up and some of the stones are quite big.

"We've even had a car transporter through here. We moved here in 2018 and by 2019 we thought we would try to do something about it."

"I thought if we were to repair it we would do a permanent surface so we decided to put the bumps down. We spoke with the neighbours and they agreed but they weren't interested in paying."

Kent did manage to get one neighbour to help chip in with the costs, but the new stretch of tarmac road with speed bumps did little to stop his woes.

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If anything it only caused more trouble, as in one unfortunate event a cement mixer trying to get down the road hit one of the bumps and spilt its load all over the street.

Luckily for Mr Kent from Kent, while the speed bumps didn't end up doing the trick he has managed to find a solution that has worked for the past 18 months with no objections from the council or emergency services.

Placing a couple of large planters directly in the middle of the road to block it off from most vehicles seems to have done the trick, with Kent saying it was 'lovely and quiet now'.

He's also joked that he could get in touch with Guinness World Records and see if they'd award him for having the shortest road with speed bumps in Britain.

Topics: News, UK News, Guinness World Record, Cars

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@MrJoeHarker