Petition in honour of pet puss fails to find support at council
Residents of Almond Avenue petitioned to the council following an incident which saw one resident’s pet cat, Whiskers, killed in September 2012.
The petition calls for traffic calming measures such as speed cameras or speed bumps to be installed and for cats to be included in the Road Traffic Act 1988 - which requires drivers to stop when colliding with a horse, cattle, ass, mule, sheep, pig or goat.
However a traffic survey conducted by West Berkshire Council concluded that such measures were not necessary as there had only been two recorded collisions since 1994 and the average speed was 29.1mph.
It added that the campaign to have cats included in the Act was a matter for central Government.
The response published by the council read: “The recorded injury accident record and the results of the traffic survey for Almond Avenue do not justify the need for traffic calming measures to be introduced.
“The results of the traffic survey indicate that speeds are not unusually high for a residential road with a 30mph speed limit.
“In addition due to the nature of the road, location of private driveways and the amount of on street parking any form of traffic calming measures would be very difficult to achieve. “