HIGHWAYS chiefs are facing renewed calls to lower the speed limit on a busy dual carriageway after rejecting one plea earlier this year.

Durham county councillors voted in June to keep the 70mph maximum limit on the A167 at Chester Moor, near Chester-le-Street, which is split by the road.

Pensioner Jeanette Tubmen is launching a campaign for a 50mph limit between Chester Moor and Plawsworth where a £1.5m roundabout was built to replace the dangerous Red Lion junction.

Mrs Tubmen, a retired health visitor, says vehicles speed despite the roundabout, that pedestrians take their lives in their hands trying to cross the road and that joining the A167 from Plawsworth can be hazardous.

She is starting a petition that will this week go into the post office at Nettlesworth, on the other side of the road. She hopes to win support from the residents of Plawsworth, Nettlesworth and Kimblesworth.

"We were told the roundabout would be the answer to everybody's prayers but it isn't.

"Pedestrians can't cross the road because it is 70mph. Pensioners from Nettlesworth and Kimblesworth who collect their pensions at Chester-le-Street get the bus home all the way to Durham and then get another one from Durham so that they are on the right side of the road and don't have to cross.

"We asked for traffic signals but were turned down.

"The ideal thing would be a footbridge but we would never get that."

She said that some traffic took the roundabout too fast, that the road was a race track for boy racers at weekends and that drivers emerging from Plawsworth had a difficult job getting into the right lane if they were trying to drive towards Chester-le-Street.

The county council's highways committee rejected Chester Moor's call, saying there were no grounds to lower the limit there.

Residents said that half the village was cut off from amenities by the A167, which has no footbridge, underpass or pedestrian crossing.

A county council spokesman said: "In view of Mrs Tubmen's concerns, our officers will visit the site to assess the situation.''

But he added that one of her concerns, the difficulty joining the A167 because of the lack of gaps in the traffic, would not be helped by a lower limit.