Page 4403 - Week 12 - Thursday, 26 October 2017
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Petition
Dangerous driving in Gordon—petition 23-17
MR WALL (Brindabella) (10.02), by leave: Today I have presented a petition on behalf of 163 residents of Gordon noting the excessive hooning and dangerous driving on Preddey Way, Clare Dennis Avenue and Lewis Luxton Avenue. This petition calls on the ACT government to take action to ensure the safety of residents and protect them against damage to people and property as a result of hooning, antisocial and dangerous driving on Preddey Way, Clare Dennis Avenue and Lewis Luxton Avenue. It is indeed a shame that residents feel the need to petition the Assembly for basic safety rights and amenity upkeep in their suburban streets; you would expect that that would be covered as par for the course by local government services.
This is not the first time residents have raised this issue. In relatively recent years the government decided that line marking at the intersection of Preddey Way and Clare Dennis Avenue might fix the problem, yet residents waited months for even this tokenistic measure to actually take place. That was in 2013. In actual fact, this has been a much longer running issue and some constituents who live in these streets are no longer shocked when an out-of-control vehicle smashes into a house for the third time. They are not surprised nor shocked when there is yet another near miss from a hooning driver careering out of control along these suburban streets, primarily at those intersections. What is a shock is that, as yet, no-one has been killed.
I quote now from a letter a resident sent the then police minister in 2015, Mr Corbell, recounting their experiences:
On the 5th December, 2015 I rang ACT Police to report four utilities speeding up and down Lewis Luxton Avenue. At the time there were a number of children playing in their front yards and members of the public walking along the footpaths. The noise from the vehicles was such that a number of residents came out to see what was happening. I was speaking with my neighbour and we could hear the vehicles coming back turning from Woodcock Drive into Lewis Luxton Avenue. He stood on the footpath and took a video with his mobile telephone which clearly showed the registration numbers of the vehicles. The neighbour banned his children from playing in their front yard as he was concerned for their safety.
I did not receive a response to my call from ACT Police on the 5th December, 2015. I rang again the following day and was told that there were no traffic police on duty that day so the job was deactivated. I was told that they could re-activate the job … I had commitments that day and could not hang around waiting at home on the off chance that someone would attend my residence.
I spoke to my neighbour and he said that he had attended Tuggeranong Police Station and showed the officer he spoke to the video footage he had taken … to cut a long story short no one seemed interested in pursuing the matter. We also had footage on our security camera.
The unacceptable behaviour of the drivers of these utilities, plus sedans, is continuing on a regular basis … mid to late afternoon, early evening and weekends.
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