FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (WNCN) – A Fayetteville neighborhood is fighting to get guardrails following multiple crashes and scary moments for some families.

People who live along Hoke Loop Road between Raeford Road and Cliffdale Road in Fayetteville told us drivers keep running off the road and landing in their backyards.

This problem has been going on for many years, they said, and they want it to end.

“Someone is going to get hurt and hopefully it’s not a driver and hopefully it’s not a child playing in the backyard,” resident Casey Clark said.

The Ellie Avenue resident fears going outside into his own backyard after a suspected drunk driver crashed through his wooden fence. He was inside with his family asleep when the incident happened.

“My fence, back fence, side fence, eventually ended up in my neighbor’s backyard, almost hit a house,” Clark said.

According to the Fayetteville Police Department, between 2018 and 2022 there were 105 accidents on Hook Loop Road.

“We are standing right here in the privacy of our own backyard and right now, any given minute, a vehicle could come through this gate because somebody is driving and texting, speeding [or] not paying attention,” Nakia Harris, Clark’s neighbor, said.

Harris said that’s been a problem for the past 16 years he has lived in the neighborhood. He even planted trees in his backyard to shield his home from Hoke Loop Road.

“We definitely need guardrails. We need something to prevent a vehicle from entering our backyard,” he said.

Andrew Barksdale with the North Carolina Department of Transportation said a guardrail could actually create a problem.

“A driver could go off the side of the road into the grass and hit a guardrail where it’s not needed and then go into oncoming traffic,” Barksdale said.

Over the years, the NCDOT has reduced the speed limit on Hook Loop Road to 35 miles per hour and added chevron curve warning signs, indicating a change in direction or narrowing of the road.

Barksdale said traffic engineers have other tools they are looking at to make conditions safer, too.

“Fayetteville Police Department, they can do a crackdown and help write some tickets to people who are going too fast in this area and that would help get their attention to slow down,” Barksdale said.

Repairs were just completed on Thursday morning on Clark’s fence after the suspected drunk driver crashed into it. He had to pay $2,500 out of pocket, including his insurance deductible.

“We can’t continue to wait until somebody gets killed. We need to do something now,” Harris said.