SPEED-MAD pensioners who race along the pavement in electric-powered buggies are facing a council clampdown.

Action is being taken after a number of incidents, in which high-speed mobility chairs have collided with pedestrians in the Lancashire seaside resort of Lytham St Annes.

In one incident, witnesses claim a man in a buggy used his walking stick like a "jousting knight" to clear people from his path.

One councillor now wants police to use pavement-mounted speed cameras to catch offenders.

Regulations stipulate buggies must travel at four miles an hour or less on pavements. Anyone riding a higher speed should be on the road.

But some exclusive buggies, costing up to £2,000, can be adjusted to travel at 10 miles an hour under battery power.

Top speeds

Police have logged a number of incidents in the past four months, including one in which a 82-year old former RAF officer is alleged to have carved up shoppers and children after driving up behind them.

In the incident involving the man with a walking stick, a pedestrian who asked him to use his warning beeper was subjected to a torrent of verbal abuse.

A spokesman for Fylde Borough Council said: "We are looking into the current proliferation of motorised wheelchairs and buggies using the pavements at speed of over four miles per hour."

Coun Richard Fulford-Brown said: "Some of these buggy users abuse their use - they come up behind you and do u-turns in the street without warning.

"I am all for people keeping mobile but not at the expense of driving like some septuagenarian Ralph Schumacher.

" I am sure something like speed cameras would act as a threat."