Residents in fear of hoons
Welcome to Hoonville — where the cars travel fast and fed-up locals live in fear for their children’s lives.
Holcombe Road, the relatively short stretch of suburban bitumen between Warnbro Sound Avenue and Currie Street, is a hoon hotspot.
The 50km/h speed limit is but a mere suggestion for the thousands of lead-footed motorists who fly down the Warnbro street at all hours.
Residents say they report the hoon behaviour to the police every day and even spray-painted the words “SLOW DOWN” on the road.
A petition is being circulated to get the City of Rockingham to install speed humps.
On Sunday night, the unmistakable revving of high-performance engines and the screech of tyres made conversation difficult.
“Them hitting one of the kids is the biggest fear or one of the cars going through one of the houses, ” Holcombe Road resident and mother-of-three Ashley Marsden said.
“We had someone only last week lose it around the corner in the wet. He’s hit the verge here and narrowly missed my fence.
“My daughter’s room is on the other side of that fence. It would have been quite easy for him to go straight through the room.”
Across the road lives Kelly Clarke, who moved from nearby Port Kennedy last year.
She said neighbours were left devastated recently when their cherished dalmatian was killed by a car travelling so fast that the impact left the vehicle a write-off.
“We’ve started putting up a wall in front of our house,” Mrs Clarke said. “We don’t want someone going through our kids’ room. At night time I move my kids to the back rooms so if they do go through the room it’s me and my husband.”
Mrs Clarke said hers and other children are forbidden to play in the street, robbing the neighbourhood of a sense of community.
Further along Holcombe, May Paparoa said students at nearby Warnbro Community High and Living Waters Lutheran College frequently used the link road to walk to school.
She fears a human casualty will be the only catalyst for change.
“It’s only a matter of time before a death,” Ms Paparoa said.
Rockingham mayor Barry Sammels said the council had no plans to install speed humps along Holcombe Road after a 2010 traffic investigation found the “environment did not demand funding in the short to medium term”.
Mr Sammels acknowledged receiving several concerned letters over the road and said the City of Rockingham was committed to working with police to tackle the “community-wide issue” of hooning.
