Miserable residents kept awake at night by “boy racers” doing doughnuts and circuits are hoping measures to rid the town centre of the nuisance drivers will work.
One desperate Turriff resident, who says her sleep is regularly disturbed, revealed the drivers are so noisy she has considered facing them down in the middle of the road in her pyjamas.
The car owners, branded “hooligans” by one inhabitant, are known to congregate in the town’s High Street carpark, shouting, playing loud music and performing doughnuts in souped-up cars long into the early hours of the morning.
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Following years of lobbying from the Turriff and District Community Council, the car park has now been partly split down the middle and lined with bollards in a bid to deter its less welcome visitors.
Police have also been working hard to crack down on anti-social driving but senior officers have admitted serious problems persist.
Additional patrols are to be detailed to problem areas in the coming weeks and months in an effort to improve road safety and make locals’ lives more bearable.
One of the shop assistants in a High Street shop, who lives in the area and asked to remain nameless, claims the noise regularly wakes her at night.
She said: “It’s the same ones that we always see doing it, revving their engines and making their tyres screech.
“They’re often out past two or three in the morning.
“I feel like going out in my pyjamas and standing at one of the crossings to make them stop or at least slow down.
“You go up to the window and look at them to try and get a number plate but it’s so hard to see.
“As they all have mobiles now, if they do see police or residents away to complain it just takes one text and they all slow right down, don’t rev and then don’t get caught.”
Another local resident said: “We’re hoping the changes to the car park will really help but the boy racers do circuits up the road to Dalgety so I’m not sure how much good it will do.
“It might stop the hooligans hanging about though.”
Despite a crackdown by police in 2016 and an attempt to get funding for CCTV, the problem has continued.
Aberdeenshire councillors took the decision in late 2018, on recommendations from the Formartine road engineer, to modify the car park to restrict the space available for late-night gatherings – and for doughtnuts in particular.
Turriff councillor Alastair Forsyth staged his own evening stakeout of the High Street to see first-hand the issues residents have experienced.
Mr Forsyth said numerous people had been in touch and his own investigation proved an eye-opener, even for someone who has followed the issue keenly.
“If you park around here they will actually do doughnuts around your car – they did it to me – to noisily entertain their peers before racing out onto the High Street.
“I saw one young lady circuiting the town sixteen times in the hour-and-a-half I was parked.
“The residents of Turriff have suffered considerable disturbance. This has been going on for longer than most residents remember.
“These measures give those responsible less space to hang around so hopefully it will mitigate some of this nuisance, but more can still be done.”
Police officers in the area are working with local partners to tackle persistent antisocial driver behaviour in Aberdeenshire.
Formartine Sergeant Scott McKay said: “We are regularly contacted regarding speeding, anti-social drivers and illegal parking at locations across the region, including the Turriff High Street car park.
“With the support of roads policing officers we have actively targeted a significant number of offenders over the festive period.
“Despite these successes, we are aware this continues to be an issue and will endeavour to focus on this over the coming months with increased patrols.”
An Aberdeenshire Council spokesman said the work had been carried out to limit anti-social driving without compromising parking spaces.
He added: “A raised build out was recently installed, which it is hoped will deter unsafe manoeuvres within the empty car park in the evenings.”
