ONE man was killed, another seriously injured, and two elderly residents had lucky escapes in August 1988 when a lorry crashed at the bottom of Teignmouth’s notorious ‘death hill’.

It was almost a replica of an accident about 15 years previously, and renewed calls for a ban on heavy vehicles going down the steep Exeter Hill.

One leading councillor demanded: ‘How many dead bodies do they want on the pile before something is done?’

The town council is poised to call an emergency meeting after the latest disaster. The scene was one of utter devastation on the dual carriageway at the bottom of the hill.

Eye witnesses said it was a miracle the death toll had not been higher. The lorry catapulted down the hill with its horn blazing during the early morning rush hour and had difficulty in taking a left hand turn into the town centre.

It crashed through a barrier sending sacks of flour it had been carrying careering through the bedroom windows of the Parson Street flats.

Eye witnesses said it was a miracle the death toll had not been higher. The truck went on two wheels as it smashed through the central crash barrier, and slid about 50 yards down the wrong side of the dual carriageway virtually on its side.

The mate in the lorry was flung out onto the road and killed instantly. The driver was trapped in his cab and it took firemen and ambulance men about 15 minutes to free him. He had head and other injuries and was rushed to Torbay Hospital.

Window frames at the flats were demolished and masonry and other debris landed on two beds where minutes before two elderly residents had been sleeping. One of them Mrs Doris Leyman, 74, had only just got up to make a cup of tea when she heard a bang.

Her bedroom was wrecked and she reckoned she would have been killed if she had been in it. In the flat immediately underneath Mrs Florence Tapper, 93, had also just risen, and her bedroom was also badly damaged.

In the early 1970s another lorry smashed at the same spot, and an elderly resident was killed along with the driver. And a few months previously the driver of a green grocery lorry was killed at the same spot.

Over the years there have been a string of accidents and near misses. A woman waiting at a bus stop said: ‘I thought it was going too fast to take the bend. Suddenly it went on two wheels and the rest was like a dream. It was a miracle there was nothing coming up the road at the time or it would have been a worse tragedy.’

Firemen were quickly on the scene and Station Officer Tom Radford said they used hydraulic rescue equipment and compressed air tools to free the driver from the mangled wreck of the cab. They worked closely with ambulancemen and duty ambulance officer Mr John Bourne said the driver was conscious throughout the ordeal.

‘He was trapped by his legs and had head and other injuries on the upper part of his body. We were able to give him treatment and make sure his condition had stabilised before he was taken to hospital.’

A passing Torbay Hospital consultant and a local GP also helped at the scene. Inspector Brian Jeffs head of Teignmouth police said a major accident investigation would take place.

One of the priorities for the police is to find out how heavy the load was. Vehicles with a combined weight of over 16 tons are banned from descending the hill, but this was often ignored. Leading campaigner and councillor Peter Winterbottom slammed highways chiefs for not acting sooner and declared: ‘How many dead bodies do they want on the pile before something is done?

‘This could have easily been a coach full of tourists. School children could have been killed.

‘I live on the road and I see lorries and coaches shooting past in excess of 50 mph. They have no hope of stopping if something goes wrong and a child runs across the road.’

Cllr Sylvia Russell feared more tragedies in if heavy lorries continued to use the road.

‘If pedestrians had been involved the results would have been too terrible to contemplate. We can’t allow it to go on’.

‘We went a long time without an accident on the hill, and I think everybody became a little bit complacent. Now this has happened there has got to be some action taken.

‘It is not the fault of the drivers every time. When the last accident happened we wondered if it was braked failure, but it can’t be coincidence all the time.

‘There must be something wrong with the camber of the incline of the road itself. Lorries are getting heavier all the time, and this sort of accident is going to happen again.’

The town council had been pressing for sometime for a weight restriction on the hill, said to be the longest in Devon.