IT'S been happening for at least 30 years - but even though Kim Surey has only had to endure crashes outside his Hampshire home since 1999, he's fed up of picking up the pieces.

Now he is calling for safety measures to be implemented on the Broad Oak section of the A334 at Botley, which is used by more than 17,500 vehicles a day.

There has been talk of a bypass for Botley for the last 27 years. But with the relief route still a distant dream, Kim wants immediate action taken to reduce the accident toll on a road which he has labelled "a lunatic asylum".

The 51-year-old retired psychiatric worker lives alongside a bridge on the A334 spanning Pudbrook Lake and says the bridge has been knocked down three times since he moved in and "umpteen times" prior to that.

He blames the long sweeping S-bend at Broad Oak for lulling drivers into a false sense of security and says that although the stretch of road has a 40mph limit

drivers use it like a race track.

Now he is calling for the speed limit through Botley village to be lowered from 30mph to 20mph and for a 30mph limit to be introduced at Broad Oak - backed by speed cameras.

He says that although he has fired off several letters to Eastleigh MP David Chidgey, Eastleigh Council and Hampshire County Council, nothing has been done and that the authorities point to a low accident statistics.

But Kim said: "I just get bounced around. There are a lot of things that happen here that they obviously don't know about.

"We see all the near-misses and the crunches that go on which nobody records. It's when you try to get out of your front gate and someone just misses you that you think: 'That could have been us dead.'"

Last month, he said, there had been two crashes within the space of six days - the first on Good Friday when a car smashed into the bridge and sent the parapet into the water.

The second happened when a car hit an oncoming vehicle on a bend.

Kim said: "When you have to go out and attend to them it's frightening. I go round and pick bits up and direct the traffic while my wife Carole does the first aid."

A year ago firefighters battled for 45 minutes to release two seriously injured young men from the wreckage of a car after it demolished the bridge and was left hanging precariously over the water.

Fire crews had to tie the vehicle to trees to prevent it from toppling over the edge.

And 32 years ago a car ploughed across the pavement and embedded itself into the nearby Brook Cottages with the driver and four people in the house luckily escaping injury.

At the time householder Iris Watts told the Daily Echo how she was sitting in her living room watching television when she heard a skid.

She said: "We get quite a lot of them here but I thought that it was rather louder than usual. Then I heard something which sounded like something ploughing through the pavement."

Mrs Watts described how she saw the curtains in her living room move and then realised the front wall and door were caving in.

"I stood up and went out to the back door and I just stood outside and screamed as loud as I could."

But despite the lucky escapes over the years, Kim Surey says the situation is getting worse and something needs to be done now before anyone is killed.

"People seem to think they can go as fast as they like down here and I don't undertand the councils' mentality for this to stay a 40mph limit.

"As far as I am concerned this is not political, it is just a question of safety."