Steve Vesty checks out the road near the roundabout with son Mason, nine months. Mr Vesty wants the city council to assess the safety of the roundabout and consider speed humps or rumble strips. Picture: TARA GOONAN
IT was the “BANG!” they had been waiting to hear for months.
Almost every night, West Wodonga residents living by the Moorefield Park Drive and Drages Road roundabout hear the sound of hoons – the screeching of tyres, honking of horns and yells.
On Monday night, the crash they had been waiting for happened.
Witnesses said a blue Ford utility smashed into a light pole on Drages Road at the roundabout, the force snapping the pole in half — and the car took off.
Father and military instructer Steven Vesty said he heard a bang and a crash and sprang from the house, expecting to put his first aid training to work.
“We could hear screeching, which was nothing new, but then we heard a big screech and a bang,” Mr Vesty said.
All that was left was a snapped light pole stretching across the roundabout, glass and a few who had stopped to help.
Mother Jacqui Pierce also heard the crash and wasn’t surprised.
“It’s mental,” Ms Pierce said.
“It’s every night.”
Her neighbour, grandmother Gayle Hamilton, said it had been an accident waiting to happen.
“It’s just dreadful — we hear them all the time,” she said.
The roundabout is in a school zone, located near Victory Lutheran College.
Mr Vesty thought Wodonga Council should assess the safety of the roundabout and consider speed humps or rumble strips — anything that would slow traffic.
City director of planning and infrastructure Leon Schultz said the council would raise the matter at the next traffic liaison meeting with VicRoads and police.
Highway patrol Sgt Cameron Roberts said the issue was more about driver attitude rather than the roundabout design.
“If people are going to approach any intersection inappropriately or behave inappropriately that’s a whole other story,” he said.
“That’s nothing to do with road design.”
Sgt Roberts warned that police were focusing on slapping drivers with higher charges.
“If you put other people at risk with a knife or a gun you’ll be charged appropriately; just because you use a car and put people potentially at similar risk, doesn’t mean you should get away with less,” he said.