No need for speed on the roads

SPEEDING accounted for more than a third of offences detected during Victoria Police’s 12-day operation on the roads this Christmas with drug driving and illegal phone use also causing concern.

Speed, impaired driving and distraction were the major focus of Operation Roadwise, which concluded at 11.59pm on December 27.

Across Bass Coast and South Gippsland, eight drink and three drug affected drivers were caught, alongside three disqualified drivers and five unlicenced drivers.

Eight seatbelt offences, seven mobile phone offences, five disobey signs/signals, one impound and five cyclist offences was rounded out by 143 speeding offences in the region.

Victoria Police’s road safety efforts now turn to holiday hotspots with the increased presence to continue right through the New Year.

Across Victoria a total 4803 speeding offences were recorded during Operation Roadwise, with 3753 of these motorists travelling 10km/h-25km/h over the speed limit. The figure is extremely concerning for police as research shows travelling at such speeds increases the risk of a collision causing serious injury or worse by more than 40 per cent.

There were 511 drink driving detections from 201,091 preliminary breath tests, a strike rate of one in 394. This is an improvement on last year’s operation when one in every 270 motorists tested returned an illegal blood alcohol reading but still worse than before the pandemic when the strike rate was around one in 450 tests.

Alarmingly 375 drug driving detections were recorded from 5122 roadside tests, a strike rate of one in 14. This figure reflects the targeted nature of drug testing however shows increased prevalence of drugs on the roads compared with last year when there was one detection for every 17 tests.

Victoria Police analysis shows daily offence detections were up 13.9 per cent compared with last year’s Roadwise operation, which ran across 10 days.

Seven deaths were recorded across the operation compared with nine fatalities over the same period last year.

For more information and tips for staying safe on the roads visit the Road Safety page on the Victoria Police website.