Deborah and Alistair Price live at Sunnybrae, about 5km from the Dunedin end of the road that runs along the edge of Otago Harbour.
So far this year, they estimate there have been between 10 and 15 crashes on the 100m stretch of road outside their house.
In the most recent, on Friday night, four young people, in a car travelling towards Dunedin, left the road, hit a power pole, turned upside down and landed in about 1.5m of water.
When Mr Price arrived on the scene, the driver and another young man were dragging two screaming young women from the car in which they had been trapped.
Mrs Price: "Friday night was particularly awful, just listening to the young girls screaming.
"It was just so horrible."
Mr Price understood only the young men's quick reactions and an air pocket inside the vehicle had prevented a tragedy.
The Prices have lived at Sunnybrae for 20 years and normally expect a crash once every two months.
But, they believe the situation has become worse this year and now Mrs Price dials 111 as soon as she hears the squeal of tyres.
"You can hear the squeal. We just wait for the bang."
A few hours after Friday night's crash, Mrs Price heard squealing tyres again but the "bang" did not come.
"I was thinking, it's going to happen again. I was a little bit on edge actually."
There has not been a fatality at the bends, but the Prices believe "one of these nights" someone will die there.
Mr Price considered speed was the usual cause, but the camber of the road was also a problem.
The power pole hit in the latest crash has been in place only a month.
Its predecessor was broken in two by a vehicle that crashed and then drove off.
Mr and Mrs Price used torches to stop more cars crashing into the pole, left lying across the road.
Mrs Price is uncertain about how to deal with being the first on the scene of a crash where cars are submerged.
"Do you wait until help comes . . . or do you break the window and let the water rush in . . .?
"You do think about it when you live on Portobello Rd."
Senior Constable Lox Kellas, of Portobello, describes the bends as a "chicane" and one of the top three places for crashes along the peninsula road.
"It's caught a lot of people over the years.
"People just taking the corner too fast is the main cause and I suppose the secondary cause would be, perhaps, road conditions - greasy wet conditions and ice."
He plans to discuss the matter with Dunedin City Council roading engineers at a meeting on Thursday.
Snr Const Kellas believed the vehicle in Friday night's crash was travelling at less than the 70kmh limit.
However, he considered even a "very experienced" driver would struggle to negotiate the bends at 70kmh and that perhaps the bends should have 45kmh signs.
