By Casey Neill
An Adelaide Street resident fears a child could fall victim to reckless truck drivers using the Dandenong road as a rat-run.
Peter Lourens has lived there for 35 years and said traffic volume was constantly growing.
“A lot of people use this street as an access to Princes Highway and Heatherton Road,” he said.
He contacted Greater Dandenong councillor Matthew Kirwan about the issue, and he raised it at the Monday 11 September council meeting.
Cr Kirwan suggested speed humps would deter drivers using the short-cut to avoid the Gladstone and Heatherton roads junction.
Acting engineering services director Craig Cinquegrana said his team would take traffic counts in the street after the school holidays so traffic engineers could assess the situation and, if necessary, determine an appropriate solution.
Mr Lourens told the Journal that the trucks used Adelaide Street “like a speedway”.
He said his son was a truck driver and had commented on the unsafe speeds other drivers were travelling through at.
Mr Lourens said there was a day-care centre at the end of the street.
“Since I’ve been here, we all got big blocks of land, units have gone up and we’ve got all different cultures living in the street,” he said.
“They’ve got little ones.
“All it takes is somebody’s little one to come out of the driveway and not think.”
He said a driver ploughed into his front fence in recent years.
“They didn’t leave their name, address or whatever,” he said.
“Neighbours heard the bang but thought there’d been accident on Heatherton Road.”
Mr Lourens thinks speed humps “would be a good solution to slow people down”.
