Hoon behaviour is triggering more police patrols near a quiet Golden Gully intersection.
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New shredded tyres and black marks across the Burns Street and Diamond Hill Road intersection appeared sometime Friday or Saturday night, regular road user Brian Eisfelder said.
The area was one of a number hoons are known to currently target, the Bendigo Highway Patrol’s Lee Clayton said.
Others included the Epsom-Barnadown Road in Bagshot, Rocky Rises Road and Collins Street in Kangaroo Flat, as well as the intersection of Edwards Road and the Calder Alternate Highway south of Marong.
Mr Eisfelder regularly drove through the quiet Diamond Hill Road intersection and while he had noticed burnout marks in the past, what he saw Sunday morning was “unbelievable”.
“I have never seen so many tyre marks on the road,” he said.
Belinda Clark had studied hoon behaviour for Victoria Police.
The Monash University Accident Research Centre research fellow said many of the smaller incidents at roundabouts and intersections were often driven by spontaneous decisions.
“Often there’s a bit or boredom there and they are usually peer-motivated,” Ms Clark said.
She branded their behavior a “recipe for disaster” endangering the lives of drivers, passengers and other road users.
“And the other thing, of course, is when they lose large amounts of rubber it renders their vehicles unroadworthy, which creates another set of issues,” Ms Clark said.
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Hoons trying to impress friends with burnouts were often younger, she said.
“I ran focus groups of hoons and I found those who were in the older group tended to be on their own and had a vehicle that was powerful,” Ms Clark said.
“They had decided to give it a try and see what their vehicle could do, usually on a freeway.
“You would think as you got older you would not want to engage in that whole tyre burnout thing because it costs you a lot of money to keep repairing your vehicle.”
If police detected hoons vehicles could be impounded for 30 days or more, Ms Clark said, with compulsory safe driver programs and fines. Repeat offenders’ cars could be seized.
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Sergeant Clayton said police had increased patrols at known hoon hotspots around Bendigo both to deter behaviour and potentially catch irresponsible drivers in the act.
He urged people who saw dangerous drivers or knew of other problem areas to make a report.
“We can’t respond to something if we don’t know about it,” Sergeant Clayton said.
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