AFTER months of warnings from local residents, the repeated failure of the Hindhead traffic lights have finally caused an accident.

No one was hurt when a lorry and car collided in Portsmouth Road at 2-20 pm on Wednesday, November 20, but the lights failure caused chaos for commuters.

Hundreds of calls were made to police from concerned motorists forced to negotiate the crossroads without any guidance.

"It was absolute chaos," a spokesman for Surrey police said. "We sent out units to deal with the accident that was as a result of the lights being down."

The two vehicles were moved to the side of the road, but officers spent most of their time dealing with the traffic. After the first reports came in at 2 pm, police passed the information on to the local authority and engineers.

The lights were still out at 6-30pm, and police were unable to confirm when they were restored.

There have been repeated failures throughout the year, at least nine that The Herald has reported, often two or three times in one day. Earlier this year a local resident described the lights as "an accident waiting to happen".

The Highways Agency have previously blamed the failures on electrical faults, but in the summer sent experts from the transport research laboratory and the manufacturers to investigate.

At time of going to press, the agency was unavailable for comment.