Box Hill North: Cafe Rubix calls for safety upgrades on footpath
Shocking video shows the moment a car ploughs into a woman on a busy Box Hill shopping strip — with a Christmas tree the only thing saving her life. It’s one of a number of near misses that has traders begging for urgent safety upgrades.
East
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The memory of a woman being mowed down by a car on the footpath of a Box Hill North shopping strip is driving calls for safety measures to be installed outside a nearby cafe.
Cafe Rubix and its customers fear the parking situation out the front of the Middleborough Rd business is “an accident waiting to happen’’, with nothing stopping vehicles from coming too close to diners seated on the footpath.
The bonnets of cars and trucks parked in front of the cafe often come right up to the edge of the outside tables, with vehicles having repeatedly bumped and knocked over the cafe’s umbrellas, and one car having taken out a parking sign metres from diners.
But the closest call was when a car mounted the kerb outside a fruit shop and ran over a woman 40m from the cafe on December 20.
Nick’s Fruit Shop owner Gina Menelaou said her customer “was very lucky” she wasn’t seriously injured, and was probably only saved by a Christmas tree that was for sale where she was standing on the footpath.
“It could have killed her,” she said. “And this has happened before.”
Ms Menelaou said about five years ago a car reversed over the kerb, through the shop’s flower stand and pinned someone up against the edge of the shop.
She said something needed to be done to stop cars jumping the kerb, especially because of her many elderly customers.
“I’m worried about their safety and my safety,” she said.
Longtime Cafe Rubix customer Paul Lambe said the situation along the strip was “just an accident waiting to happen”.
“We’ve seen so many near misses,” he said.
Mr Lambe said customers were left feeling unsafe every time a car pulled up.
“You are always feeling unsafe,” he said. “But there’s an obvious, common sense solution.”
Cafe Rubix manager Daniel Daley, who has worked at Kerrimuir Shopping Strip for almost seven years, said Mr Lambe was one of many customers who complained about how close cars came to them when they sat on the footpath.
He said because the car spaces outside the cafe didn’t even have wheel stops, cars driving their wheels all the way up to kerb meant their vehicle loomed far over the footpath.
Mr Daley said the cafe’s former owners first asked for Whitehorse Council to install bollards in 2014, but the dangerous situation remained.
He said the council actually told the cafe to put its tables closer to the carpark about a year ago, saying the footpath thoroughfare needed to be wider.
Whitehorse Council general manager corporate services Peter Smith said its footpath trading guidelines required street furniture to be placed on the kerbside, 0.5m from the kerb edge, to align with disability access principles.
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General manager city development Jeff Green said the council received a request in February to install bollards near the fruit shop, but had not received a request to install bollards or ‘wheel stops’ outside cafe Rubix.
But he said installing bollards as a safety measure was not typically done by the council.
“It is not council’s practice to install bollards or other physical devices within shopping centre carparks to protect properties or to prevent vehicles mounting nature strips or footpaths. “Council has at times used bollards outside shops for decorative purposes and to direct pedestrians away from carparking.
“However, bollards are not intended to physically protect pedestrians or buildings.”