SAFETY concerns have prompted residents of a North Yorkshire street used as a rat-run by motorists to carry out a traffic survey.

For years, locals in Shipton-by-Beningbrough have asked the county council to ban heavy vehicles from East Lane.

However, the county said surveys of traffic using the lane failed to justify such a move.

Now fed-up residents in East Lane want action, after carrying out their own survey and finding one out of every five vehicles was a commercial or heavy goods vehicle.

For the past week, East Laners have taken it in turns to monitor traffic using the road between 7am and 6pm.

They discovered that about 2,000 vehicles used the road each day - with one fifth of them being heavy goods or commercial models.

Now locals are meeting on Thursday to discuss the next step.

District councillor, Mollie Haigh, who lives on East Lane, said action was needed because of the volume of traffic and the fact ten children now lived in the street.

She said: "If you get two lorries passing each other, one has to go on the pavement, which makes it even worse. Then there are people with children and toddlers. We are very nervous about the safety factor."

She said lorries often used the road as a rat-run to avoid the Ring Road around York.

And she said residents now hoped the county council would think again about banning such vehicles from the Lane in light of the new survey.

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