After a 77 year old man’s house was hit by vehicles more than 10 times, he spent GBP12,500 to build a concrete barricade around his driveway.
Owen Allan has warned speeding motorists for years to slow down around the sharp corner where his house in on. Between 2012 and 2014, his house was hit 13 times by vehicles who attempted to take the bend at excessive speeds.
One vehicle that crashed into his house almost caused an explosion because it was just inches away from an oil tank.
Allan, a retired medical technician, decided enough was enough and it was time to build a barricade.
“Me and my wife could have died because drivers could crash into our bedroom wall and kill us while we slept,” Allan said. “Now if they hit my house they will go to the morgue of hospital on a stretcher, not us.”
Allan spent over GBP12,500 ($18,126 U.S. dollars) on asphalt driveway repairs, adding concrete blocks that should prevent vehicles from hitting his home.
“They didn’t leave me a choice,” he said.
Allan borrowed about GBP4,500 from his close friends to pay for the barricade. He was nervous that eventually, due to the negligence of other drivers, him and his wife would have gotten seriously injured or worse.
Allan added that the majority of the accidents were caused by drunk drivers who had recently left the pub and took the bend near his house too fast.
“It’s always been a bad bend,” Sylvia Spratling, who lives across the street for Allan, said. “Over the years there have been some really bad crashes.”
“It is not safe here,” Allan said. “In the end I just got fed up and decided to take action.”
Not everyone needs concrete driveways with barricades like Allan’s to protect from dangerous drivers, although it’s not a bad idea.
Concrete driveways are a luxury for homeowners and should be handled as such. Whether you need an impenetrable barricade around your property, concrete driveways, or just a peaceful place to live, it’s important to take care of your property as best you can.
