By Nicole Precel
RESIDENTS of The Avenue in Spotswood have said living there was like playing Russian roulette.
Cars have gone through the fences of at least three properties in the past year.
According to residents near the intersection of Kernot St and The Avenue, there have been many more.
Last week John Kara’s fence was destroyed. He said fire trucks, an ambulance and police attended the scene after the car went through the fence.
John, his pregnant wife Melissa and son Bastien have had enough.
“I just thought, ‘I hope Bastien is OK’. It could have been potentially fairly dangerous,” he said.
Mr Kara said in the past six months a motorcycle had run into his fence, a semi-trailer had pulled down power lines in the street and a car ran into a fence across the road from him.
“That’s not even mentioning the signs knocked over in the middle of the street. There have been cars stuck on top of those signs,” he said.
The problems, Mr Kara believes, stem from drink drivers, hoons and people who don’t see the keep-left sign in the middle of the street until it is too late.
“Every night without failure, they keep you up,” he said.
“You hear it and are waiting for an accident to happen. It’s shocking.”
Liz Bailey, who lives only two houses down from Mr Kara, had a car go through her fence six months ago and said residents now wanted speed bumps installed.
“It’s just not safe, it’s lucky no-one has been killed,” she said.
Hobsons Bay City Council director of works and assets Phillip McDonald said in the last five years there had been three accidents in The Avenue resulting in minor injuries, and one serious.
Mr McDonald said council officers inspected the accident site and identified minor improvements, including refreshing line marking, installing flexible signage, doing a dob-in-a-hoon letter drop, and possible pavement resurfacing at the intersection of The Avenue and Kernot St.
Mr McDonald said the council would continue to work with the police, VicRoads and the RoadSafe Westgate Community Road Safety Council to promote compliance with speed limits through police enforcement, engineering initiatives, education and community awareness.
The council stated it would undertake a traffic and speed count in The Avenue at the end of October to identify possible road safety improvements.
Hobsons Bay Traffic Management Unit Sergeant Phillip Holian said there had been 10 accidents on the road in the past year and while police were working to improve the safety of the area, it was not a high priority.
“I’d need to have one (accident) occurring once a week, I have roads where there are 30 occurring every year,” he said.
“Together with the council I’m going to sit down and see if we can’t organise another way of the vehicles feeding in … which is causing the bank-up and then the collisions,” he said.
But residents believe the council was waiting for a fatality before anything was fixed and Mr Kara said something needed to happen to prevent this.
“Melissa reported this to council at the beginning of the year, this hooning and driving of accidents in January and nothing was being done,” Mr Kara said.
“We were talking about forming some sort of blockade on the street one day. What else can we do?”
Both Mrs Bailey and Mr Kara said they were hoping to move from The Avenue.
