CORSTON residents say lorries are hitting Kingway Bridge at least once a week.

They say there are far more accidents at the blackspot on the A429 than the police are called to.

The last reported incident at the bridge was two weeks ago when the road was closed for five hours and reduced to one lane overnight.

Railtrack, which owns the bridge, announced on Friday that it is to spend £60,000 on hi-tech monitoring devices to tell them instantly when it has been hit and the extent of the damage.

"Every couple of days something hits that bridge," said Kingway Garden Centre manager Kevin Gilbert.

He said the majority of lorries do not even bother to stop when they hit the bridge because they know they risk prosecution.

They leave their cargo strewn across the road and Mr Gilbert and his staff have to clear it up before there is an accident.

On May 21 a lorry carrying three hydraulic cherry pickers hit the bridge and the arm of one of the machines swung round, hitting an on-coming car. No one was injured but the road closure resulted in massive hold- ups and meant Mr Gilbert had to divert all the deliveries he was expecting.

"The trouble is it's a fair detour because it's all country roads," he said.

Further problems arise when traffic is forced to turn around when the bridge is blocked, using the garden centre's driveway.

Mr Gilbert says that suggestions to raise the bridge have been rejected because several miles of track would have to be lifted.

The road cannot be lowered because it would hit a gas main.

But he suggests electronic beams could be used to measure the height of lorries and activate a stop sign if they are too high.

Mark Prescott, the owner of Kingway Electrical Services, also based on the garden centre site, said that his business is disrupted when the road is closed.

He added that it is the responsibility of lorry drivers to know how high their vehicle is.

In 1998, Railtrack spent £100,000 installing protective steel girders on either side of the bridge to prevent collisions from damaging it.

The new electronic sensors positioned on the bridge will tell engineers the extent of any damage instantly.

They will help minimise disruption to rail services as currently Railtrack has to slow trains as soon as an accident is reported and normal service cannot resume until an engineer has gone to the scene and carried out an inspection.

St Paul Without Parish Council has been battling to have something done about the dangerous bridge for years.

"It just goes on and on and on, it comes up at practically every meeting," said Coun Daphne Jones.

She said that a range of options had been explored over the years and that the parish council's latest idea is to divert the lorries and force them to take other routes to the M4.

A county council spokesman said that there were already plenty of signs indicating the height of the bridge and that it was a driver's responsibility to know the height of his vehicle.