The Great Wall built in bid to halt Hutt prangs
Anyone might think Lower Hutt residents Blair and Louise Ansell live beside a race track.
Speeding cars have crashed through their front yard fence on two separate occasions in 2017.
The latest incident happened in the early hours of Boxing Day after they had gone to bed.
The couple have become so angry and fearful of it happening again that they lined the berm outside their home in the suburb of Naenae with six two-tonne concrete blocks.
Blair Ansell said his family was sleeping about 1am on Tuesday after enjoying Christmas dinner when a car misjudged the turn outside their home on the corner of Waddington Drive and Cole St.
The car turned their six-foothigh (1.8m) wooden fence into ‘‘matchsticks’’, struck a big pile of wood and flipped upside down by their front yard, demolishing the children’s soccer goal post in the process.
Two people got out of the car with the stereo blaring while a neighbour helped free a third, he said.
Ansell had only recently put the finishing touches on fixing the fence after another car smashed through it in January.
That car went through their neighbour’s property and landed upside down in a nearby creek.
‘‘One is an [incident], twice you have a problem, but a third? Someone killed? Does it need to come to that?’’
Waddington Drive is a 50kmh residential area with an even lower speed limit outside Naenae Primary School down the road.
But the Ansells say they have regularly seen people speeding down the long, wide street.
They approached the Hutt City Council to take action after the first incident, but nothing has been done yet.
Their house sits on a corner near the Cole St turnoff, so Blair Ansell thought putting in a roundabout could slow traffic while also providing the opportunity to put in a pedestrian crossing for the primary school.
‘‘I don’t care what they do, they just need to slow these guys down.
‘‘We didn’t buy this house to have our kids hurt.’’
Louise Ansell said this was the last thing the family needed for Christmas.
‘‘Our children had just finally got to bed ... and I thought not again. Not now.
‘‘What if it happened in the day and [the children] were on our tramp?’’
Mayor’s view
Lower Hutt mayor Ray Wallace said a staff member would be in touch with the family.
‘‘We must be able to do something, whether it’s traffic calming measures on the street or proper bollards ... that would stop a vehicle, we will certainly look at that,’’ he said.
‘‘So hopefully there will be a real positive end to it.
‘‘But the main thing is none of the family are seriously hurt.’’
Wallace hoped any reckless driving would be fully prosecuted.
‘‘The key issue here is we’ve got to get the bad drivers driving better.
‘‘He could have taken someone’s life, quite frankly.’’
A police spokeswoman said they were investigating the incident, but no charges had been laid.