LOCAL police were pleased with driver behaviour in the Wellington police service area during the Easter long weekend.
Victoria Police Eastern Region Division Six Superintendent Brad Dixon said there were 106 driving offences detected in the Wellington PSA, and 323 in east Gippsland.
Drug driving results in Wellington and east Gippsland fared well compared to the statewide results, with Victoria Police revealing one in seven drivers drug tested returned a positive result.
In Wellington, four drivers returned positive drug results, while in east Gippsland there were three.
Supt Dixon said the number of offences for driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol was still too high, “but when you consider we did over 10,000 preliminary tests (about 4000 in Wellington) — it’s about 0.1 per cent of drivers tested”.
“One of these however is too many, so there is still some more work to be done getting the message through,” he said.
Supt Dixon said the majority of offences in Wellington were for low range speeding, which topped the list with 45 offences.
“Of course there are those who speed, tailgate and otherwise drive unsafe, but we found the majority of drivers were doing the right thing over the Easter period, which is pleasing,” he said.
“We didn’t see many offences of blatant high risk, high end speeding, which was encouraging.
“Speeding and tailgating remain the two most prominent high risk behaviours of drivers in our area.
“This is followed by mobile phone use.”
Other offences detected in Wellington included 17 unregistered vehicles, two drink driving offences, one disqualified driver, five unlicensed drivers, two seatbelt offences, one mobile phone offence and four cyclist offences.
There were two serious injury collisions in the region, both involving motorcycles, resulting in suspected broken legs.
“One of these was off road in the bush, the other happened in Stratford,” Supt Dixon said.
“Two serious injuries is not ideal, but the great result is that no one was killed on our roads — given the volume of people a great result.”
Statewide there were 234 disqualified or suspended drivers, 483 unlicensed drivers, 1089 unregistered vehicles, 3330 speeding offences, 314 mobile phone offences, 348 disobey signs-signals, 90 impounds and 301 seatbelt offences.
