A MOTHER who woke to find a car had smashed through her front garden has joined calls for traffic calming on a rat run.

Gill Cogger and her husband Anthony are too scared to let their five-year-old son Christopher play in the front garden of their home in Sandling Lane, Maidstone, because of speeding traffic.

And in the early hours of last Thursday things got even worse when a taxi veered off the road, smashed through their front wall and only narrowly missed their home.

Just a few hours earlier, Christopher and his school friends had been in the garden enjoying the freshly fallen snow.

"If it had been three hours earlier those children would have been under that car," Mrs Cogger said.

She wants to see the road narrowed to make cars to slow down or other physical measures implemented to force drivers to cut their speed.

Despite the growing evidence to suggest it should be otherwise, Sandling Lane has only ever been marked down as low priority, said Maidstone council ward member, Cllr Jenni Paterson (Lib Dem).

She added that the very nature of the road seemed to encourage speeding.

Highways officers have agreed to see if an appropriate scheme can be drawn up to solve the problem.