Victim believes it is time to repave Wellfield Road. Business owners are also concerned
THIS is the moment that Jo Thomas became the latest victim of Roath’s pavements, sustaining life-changing injuries when walking along Wellfield Road.
Jo Thomas, of Pen-y-Lan, had nipped out for a Mina’s chicken salad when her foot got caught on a dip in the pavement and she landed on her hip, which was broken.
The next day she had a complete hip replacement, something Mrs Thomas, 56, has described as life-changing.
Since the accident on September 27, she hasn’t been able to return to work, go out in the dark over her fear of not seeing uneven pavements, attend friends’ birthdays, or sit at 90 degrees.
Mrs Thomas had been working as a special resources teaching assistant at Marlborough Primary School, the best job she’d ever had. But now she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to go back due to the physical nature of the job.
She is not the first person to fall on Wellfield Road and Mrs Thomas is worried she won’t be the last.
Business owners say they have become accustomed to seeing people fall over since 2020 when work was completed to make the the road one way.
Errol Willy, owner of Errol Willy Hair and Beauty, said that people often come into his salon covered in blood having fallen in the street.
Kaivan Forouzan, owner of Luxor Fashion, said he had witnessed lots of people falling. He said the new bollards had proved dangerous, because many people didn’t see them.
In 2022, a video went viral of a woman tripping over a bollard and falling flat on her face. In the same year a young woman also suffered facial injuries in an unrelated incident, and in 2021, a man fell over the cycle lane and broke his wrist.
Mrs Thomas believes the council should completely repave the pavements, and get rid of all possible trip hazards to ensure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.
Jo said: “If I can do it just walking down the street, somebody else could do it and hurt themselves again.”
The council has denied responsibility for Mrs Thomas’s accident and said it had checked the pavements on September 11, a fortnight before the incident.
Dafydd Trystan, who is a guide runner for former Team GB Paralympian, Tracey Hinton MBE, who is completely blind, is also concerned about the state of the pavements.
He said he often had to run on roads instead of pavements because they can be so bumpy in places. When he does run with Tracey on pavements he finds himself having to describe bumps ahead.
“Having good quality pavements is useful for everybody, but it’s a necessity for people who have got a range of disabilities,” said Mr Trystan.
