By Danielle Kutchel
An Upper Beaconsfield resident has detailed her harrowing experience at the hands of hoons rampaging up a rural road.
Debbie Grant is at her wits’ end after listening to four-wheel-drives racing up her dirt road in the early hours of the morning and having several nasty confrontations with their occupants.
Ms Grant lives on Foott Road, a dirt, single-lane track through the back of Upper Beaconsfield.
As a rural road, the speed limit is 100km/h, but Ms Grant said the drivers were being unsafe with no consideration for other road users.
An avid horse rider, Ms Grant said it had become stressful to ride up her road after several threatening confrontations with the drivers.
One incident in particular has stuck in her head; a driver came “incredibly close” to her and her horse during a daytime ride in April.
When Ms Grant requested that the driver slow down, she said he jeered and laughed at her.
He returned and came too close to her again, before charging through Cardinia Creek, which separates Foott Road from Chadwick Road.
The wake from the vehicle almost swept another person off a rock in the creek where she had been standing.
Ms Grant said she rung the police but was told nothing could be done without a number plate.
She and her husband heard the hoons return to the creek area later that night, and Ms Grant said her husband went out to see if he could catch their number plates.
This time, she said the drivers tried to physically pull her husband out of the car.
“It’s just gotten ridiculous in that area,” she said.
She has complained to various authorities, trying to get the speed limit reduced in the area, but said she had been told the speed limit of Foott Road is in line with regulations for other rural roads in Victoria.
“You can’t even pass two cars on this road, yet it’s 100km/h.”
She is furious the hoons are disregarding residents and other road users as they tear through the bush track and across the creek area.
“It actually is a beautiful nature area, that creek … and they’ve completely wrecked it,” she said.
“For residents of the area it’s made us feel unsafe.
“We’ve experienced disrespectful, horrible, unsafe behaviour.”
Her comments echo those of other residents on nearby Chadwick Road, which have been covered by Star News.
“You feel unsafe just riding out your gate. It’s just very unpleasant,” Ms Grant said.
