A community group set up following a fatal high-speed car crash in St Kilda last year has called on the Dunedin City Council to introduce traffic calming measures in the suburb as soon as possible.
St Kilda's flat topography and wide streets encouraged speeding and residents did not feel safe in their homes or walking on the streets because of the careless nature of some drivers, spokesman Aaron Hawthorne said.
The group knew of residents too afraid since the fatality to use rooms in their homes which were on road boundaries, and others who struggled to sleep at night.
‘‘... In the interests of public safety, the council must identify our area in the transportation operations expenditure budget and undertake remedial works on the roads that will result in the traffic speeds reducing,'' he said in a submission to the council's annual plan hearings committee.
The group also asked the council to monitor the traffic calming measures to make sure they were working.
In January, an 11-year-old boy died when he was thrown through a wooden fence, and his 12-year-old friend was seriously injured, when two cars collided at the intersection of Richardson and Moreau Sts. Both boys had been travelling in the boot of a sedan car.
Residents said the other car involved was ‘‘hoofing it'' just before the vehicles collided. That car left the road, demolished a fence and ended up embedded in a house.
Police have not yet laid any charges in relation to the crash.
Mr Hawthorne, who did not appear before the hearings committee, said crash figures supplied by the South Dunedin police showed the seriousness of crashes in the area were increasing and that speed was a factor in 23% of all injury crashes.
An estimated 15% of drivers recorded in routine traffic counts exceeded 60kmh in the 50kmh zone.
‘‘Our concerns may well only relate to a small percentage of the traffic... however, the fear is that these speeds are in fact much more than the legal speed limit and the consequences of an accident potentially much greater.''
