A mum has said that late night car meet ups are waking her baby in the middle of the night.
Other people in Bromborough have also reported that they have had enough of the antisocial driving in their area as police report a rise in disturbances. The Wirral town has reportedly been the victim of loud late night car meets for years.
Now local police have upped their efforts to crackdown on the boisterous behaviour that is regularly disturbing neighbours. As recently as March 16 officers had to seize a vehicle with a modified extra-loud exhaust that was involved in a meet on Riverview Road.
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Following this incident, police have said they are close to implementing a public space protection order. This could see gatherings of groups and cars, late at night, prohibited.
A spokesperson for Merseyside Police said: “We’re aware that some road users are using Riverview Road and the surrounding roads to drive in a dangerous and anti-social manner. Recently there have been large groups of people meeting up in the area, which has disturbed local residents who can hear engines revving late into the evening.
“Wirral’s Local Policing Team is working with our Roads Policing Unit to disrupt drivers using the roads in this anti-social manner. We’ll be checking the driver documents of anyone found to be involved, and will use relevant legislation to prosecute offenders were appropriate.
"We’re also working with the Anti-Social Behaviour team at Wirral Council to implement a Public Space Protection Order. We will not tolerate this behaviour and are working hard to reduce these incidents to minimise any disruption in the community.”
So far the crackdown seems to have worked and according to some long term neighbours, who said that the car meets had been a regular but not necessarily disruptive occurrence in the area "for 20 odd years now", it has improved. Others who live in the areas known for the meet up as something like a racetrack, have little to report on.
Les, who lives in Bromborough, said he didn't think the car meets and late night drivers caused much of a problem on his road, near the popular Riverview Road. He added: "The cars have got to cut through somewhere".
But not everyone agrees. Some say that a new but familiar problem has also arisen alongside the disturbances from car meets, this problem being the rising levels of disturbance caused by people and groups on motorised and electric bikes
Lisa, a mum of two who lives just off a Bromborough recreation ground, said that since she moved in three years ago the disturbances from late-night anti-social driving, which still regularly wake her and her baby up, have slowly been reducing though admittedly with an upwards blip during lockdowns.
She said: "I've been here three years and during lockdown it was really bad, but this year with the police going around it has been a lot quieter. It used to happen every Sunday night.
"Around here it's not as much the cars- it's the bikes, the scrambler bikes, we get loads of them around here.
"Every Weekend still, every Saturday night. They race up and down here like its no one's business- no helmets on; it's pitch black; no lights on their bikes.
"As soon as it goes dark at about 11 o'clock at night, that's when the bikes come up and down the road. It must be when the parents are at work because they're young'uns, teenagers."
Lisa also said that it isn't just the road which the bikes and cars are rushing down, but across Bromborough recreation ground too. Tyre tracks for both modes of transport can be seen streaking through the grass.
She said that her children are regularly awoken at night: particularly problematic when raising a small baby. When asked what she thought could be done to potentially make the park safer for her and her children she said: "We do need more police around here if we can, really. Maybe from 11pm until 2am.
"We need lighting too. You can't see, it's pitch black at night.
"We could do with some lighting, especially in an area like this one with kids. All we have is two street lamps."
