Police drive important message following poor weekend

A SENIOR Limestone Coast police officer has implored members of the local community to “look after their mates” following a weekend of poor drink and drug driving results in the region.

A total of eight people were detected driving with a blood alcohol concentration above the legal limit in the region, while a further four were caught with drugs in their system.

The alarming detections come less than a week after two fatal crashes in the region, which triggered a senior police warning of tougher road rule enforcement, and another serious crash at Monbulla on Friday.

Limestone Coast acting officer in charge Operations Inspector Campbell Hill said the results of the targeted operation, which ran from Friday night to yesterday morning, showed the road safety messages were still failing to get through to certain people.

“We have 12 people that we know of that could have potentially killed people on the roads,” Insp Hill said.

“They are some pretty alarming numbers given our messages early last week following the devastating fatal crashes in our region.”

Insp Hill said police would continue to drive home the reality drivers need to be responsible for their own behaviour.

However, he said the message now needed to extend to the friends, family and colleagues of these people who are making poor decisions in their presence.

“We know that there are people who got detected who had left sporting clubs, licensed premises and friend’s houses,” he said.

“These people are leaving places where they were with other people prior to getting picked up drink or drug driving.

“So I think the critical message now is to get members of the community to start taking responsibility for other people’s behaviour too.”

He said it is time for everyone to start “looking out for their mates” particularly where alcohol is involved and decision-making is impaired.

“We want people at sporting clubs to look after their teammates – we want people drinking at a private premises or licensed premises to look after their mates,” he said.

“If they think their mate is not good to drive, they need to step up and stop them because by doing so they could be saving their mate’s life, but they could also be saving the lives of others on the road.”

While the targeted operation concluded at 5am yesterday morning, Insp Hill said poor driving behaviour continued at the start of the working week.

“Yesterday morning our traffic officers detected three people exceeding 110kph by more than 10kph and another man caught travelling 100kph in a 60kph zone,” he said.

“The common excuse was that they were running late to work, so people need to weigh up whether they would rather be five to 10 minutes late to work or risk not making it all or copping a huge fine once detected.”

Insp Hill highlighted the community’s rising concerns with driver beahviour on the roads.

He aimed to reassure all road users that local police were leaving no stone unturned in trying to alter that behaviour in the region.

“The disappointing thing is that all the people we are detecting are from the Limestone Coast, they aren’t tourists driving through,” he said.

“We are aware these people are out there and we are allocating our resources accordingly to tighten the net and take these people off the road.”