A long weekend traffic safety blitz caught 46 speeding drivers from around the region. Photo: Fairfax
A STATEWIDE long-weekend traffic safety operation has been deemed a success by western region police, breath-testing a total of 3108 drivers and recording no fatal accidents in the local area commands.
Preliminary figures for Operation Slowdown have shown that 3108 drivers were breath-tested across Barwon, New England and Oxley Local Area Commands with 325 drivers booked for various offences.
Commencing at 12.01am on Friday, the operation used double demerit points to enforce traffic infringements.
A 24-year-old Narrabri man was one of the first to be caught in the operation, after he was stopped at 9.30am on Friday on the Newell Highway at Narrabri, failing a roadside breath test.
He was arrested and taken to Narrabri Police Station where he was found to have a blood alcohol content of 01.69, more than three times the legal limit.
He had his licence suspended and was charged with high range proscribed concentration of alcohol (PCA).
Two drivers were also booked in the New England LAC for drink-driving offences and Oxley LAC recorded two drivers charged over the same period.
Senior Sergeant Mal Unicomb from Western Region Traffic and Highway Patrol Command said although certain offences were disappointing, the statistics showed that the safe driving message is starting to get through to some drivers.
“Our expectation is that people are starting to realise drink-driving and speeding offences are the main killers on the road,” Sergeant Unicomb said.
“A lot of these people caught during the operation will lose their licences as a result of double demerits, so they will learn the hard way.”
Two P-platers caught at speeds up to 65km/h over the limit in Tamworth were among 145 drivers booked for exceeding the speed limit across all three command areas.
An 18-year-old Narrabri man was pulled over after he was caught driving at 111km/h in a 60km/h zone along Nundle Rd on Sunday.
Just two minutes later, police pulled over an 18-year-old Bowling Alley Point man along the same stretch of road driving at 125km/h in that same speed zone.
The two joined 44 other speeding drivers to double the speeding offences in the Oxley LAC during the same period in 2011.
Breath testing a total of 1224 drivers, Oxley LAC police also charged two drivers with failing to wear a seatbelt and 61 drivers for other offences.
Barwon LAC statistics recorded 26 speeding drivers, one for seatbelt offences, and 54 other offences with a total of 748 people slowing down for random breath tests across the period.
Across the New England LAC, the number of speeding drivers fell from 104 in 2011, to 73 drivers in 2012, but drivers charged with seatbelt and other offences rose slightly.
Across the New England region, 1206 drivers were subjected to roadside random breath tests.
While the western region recorded no fatal accidents, three people lost their lives across NSW over the long weekend; a 74-year-old woman died in Cooma and a 20- year-old man and eight-year-old boy died in separate accidents in Sydney.
The operation ended at 11.59pm on Monday.
