Happy Valley residents film hoons to shame them on Facebook page

Two Happy Valley residents fed up with motorists speeding down their street have set up a camera to film the hoons so they can shame them online.

Two Happy Valley residents so fed up with motorists speeding down their street have set up a camera to film the hoons so they can shame them online.

Graham Thomas and Jerome van der Linden installed the camera about a month ago, which covers a 33m stretch of Regency Rd, near Torrens St.

They upload footage of speeding motorists to their Facebook page — Happy Valley Hoons: Expose, Shame and Name bad drivers — to highlight the hoon behaviour and encourage drivers to abide by the road rules.

“Graham and I have been friends and neighbours for many years and I mentioned I had a spare camera … (so we decided) to put it up and see what was going past on the road,” Mr van der Linden, 70, said.

“We then came up with the idea we should work out how fast the cars they were going.

“We made a Facebook page to highlight the issue, get some traction (and hopefully) get the police to do some more monitoring.

“We are not trying to be vigilantes, we just want to make people aware of the hooning that goes on here.”

Happy Valley residents Graham Thomas and Jerome van der Linden displaying their car speeding detection equipment, having complaining to both Onkapringa Council and SAPOL about the amount of hooning going on near their homes. Picture: AAP/Russell Millard

The neighbours said they had contacted SA Police and Onkaparinga Council in recent months asking for more speed cameras and traffic calming devices on the road, which has a 50km/h speed limit, but had received a lukewarm response.

Mr van der Linden said he had made authorities aware of the Facebook page and had reported some speeding incidents to police.

The men use a camera, laptop, stopwatch and basic physics to calculate the cars’ speed.

Mr Thomas, 75, said the worst recording to date was a V8 vehicle caught travelling more than double the 50km/h speed limit in late December.

“I have been living here since the late 1960s, and this is the worst speeding has ever been,” Mr Thomas said.

“It was 11.45pm on Christmas night and I heard a car come down the street, obviously a V8, and I thought ‘God strewth, the speed’.

“We worked out he was doing about 100km/h … and we think the same car came down the next day and we got him speeding in broad daylight.”

SA Police road policing section officer in charge Insp Damien Epps said “a few complaints” had been received about hoon driving in the area in the past few months.

He encouraged anyone with information about speeding motorists, including those with footage, to contact police.

“Details such as descriptions of vehicles, registrations (if any), description of the driver, and any addresses they attend or appear to frequent will assist the investigation,” Insp Epps said.

“All road users need to know they can be filmed anywhere, anytime, which dramatically increases the chances of being caught.

“Vision, whether captured by CCTV, a dashcam or any other source, can provide valuable evidence to police.”

Onkaparinga city operations acting director Daryl Sowerby said a road safety audit in July 2017 found ”traffic management treatments” would be difficult to install on the road.

“The section of Regency Rd — between Glenloth Drive and Kenihans Rd — could not be considered for traffic management treatments because its gradients and restricted sight distance mean they would not meet current Australian standards and design guidelines,” Mr Sowerby said.

“In February, we will also be installing permanent ‘Remember 50(km/h)’ signs at each end of Regency Rd.

“These signs will act as a continual reminder for motorists to keep their speed in check.”