Tamworth Operation Slow Down: Police catch poor driving over long weekend

Oxley Police District highway patrol officers were shocked by some of the offences drivers committed.

“We caught a woman drink-driving twice in one day,” Peel Cluster Acting Senior Sergeant Mark Lyon said.

“She was charged at Walcha and then charged again at Tamworth, however she was low range.

“It’s those high-range drink drivers that are a real concern and they were spread over a few areas – Gilgai near Inverell and Armidale.”

Oxley officers conducted more than 4000 random breath tests at the weekend, three of those people were high range with readings of .237, .154 and .159.

More than 250 drivers copped double demerit points for speeding, 175 for other offences and just six people were caught without seatbelts.

“That was really good, usually it’s much higher for this area,” Sergeant Lyon said.

“There were only a couple of mobile phone offences which was good as well.”

A 21-year-old from South Australia was detected travelling at 172 kilometres an hour on the Newell Highway in a 110 kilometre zone.

“The big thing is that we didn’t have any fatalities, although 257 speeding tickets over four days is not good – that’s nearly 60 a day,” he said.

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“That many speeding offences with double demerits is a bit alarming, the good thing is mobile phone tickets were down which everyone is starting to believe it has a major impact on our fatalities.

“And the seatbelt detections were down so that’s a good result for us.”

Operation Slow Down was a statewide crackdown on overnight fatal crashes and road safety enforcement.

The operation began at midnight on Thursday and wrapped up on Monday at midnight and double demerits were in place over the duration of the operation.

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