Published: Wednesday, 21st October, 2009 5:25pm

Miraculous escape as car stops just feet from door

A Brawny resident has called on the local authority to install full speed ramps in the housing estate after a car crashed right through a fence and into her front garden, stopping feet from her front door.

Miraculously, no one was injured but Jenny Hynes of Brawny Road told the Westmeath Independent this week that if the incident which occurred last Tuesday around 11.30am had happened any earlier in the morning someone would have been killed.

"If it had happened any earlier it would have been 100 times worse," Jenny warned. "Around five children wait there including my son for the school bus. Someone would have been caught underneath it.

A fellow walking past just missed it by about ten seconds. He was in shock," she recalled.

"I was upstairs and I thought someone was drilling with a Kango hammer and I just looked out and I saw the car hitting a fence across the way and come through mine and knocked it. It just missed by house by inches, hitting a bench I have at the front and rolling back," she added.

There has been a number of accidents in the Brawny Road area over the last couple of years according to Jenny, who has now urged the council to tackle the issue and step up traffic calming in the area.

The incident has been reported to Athlone Town Council and Gardaí.

"If there was a full ramp, cars would have to slow down. At the moment there is just a half ramp and the cars are driving between them," she said.

Jenny Hynes called on the local authority to put traffic calming measures in place urgently to improve the safety situation for residents and to prevent a tragedy occurring in the estate in the future.