More than 65 early morning commuters have been caught speeding during a recent road policing blitz on Melbourne’s major arterials.
Operation Sunrise, conducted by State Highway Patrol, saw police targeting motorists travelling in the early hours of the morning, with a particular focus on speeding commuters.
It comes as recent police intelligence shows that the number of fatal collisions occurring between 6am and 8am has increased to 13.5% this year, up from the five-year average of 7.5%.
The two-day early morning blitz saw a total 143 offences detected, including 67 speeding offences, with the majority of those motorists caught speeding between 10 – 25km/h over the speed limit.
The penalty for exceeding the speed limit by more than 10km/h but less than 25km/h is $385 and three demerit points.
Police also conducted 122 preliminary breath tests and 30 roadside drug tests, with one driver detected for drug driving.
Other offences detected included six unlicenced/disqualified drivers, five mobile phone offences and one seatbelt offence.
Two motorcyclists were also fined for not wearing helmets.
State Highway Patrol will continue to conduct road policing operations targeting high-risk times and locations, in an effort to reduce road trauma.
For more information and tips for staying safe on the roads this long weekend, visit the Road Safety page on the Victoria Police website.
Quotes attributable to Road Policing Assistant Commissioner Road Policing, Glenn Weir:
“Operation Sunrise focuses on those motorists travelling in the early hours of the morning with very little traffic on the road who are opting to exceed the speed limit.
“Speeding is still the leading contributor to road trauma and we’ve also seen an increase in fatal collisions during those early hours.
“The early morning commute is probably not a time that motorists would typically expect to see police, so we certainly surprised plenty of people during this operation.
“We’ll be conducting more of these ‘anywhere, anytime’ style of operations over the remainder of the year, so motorists should be prepared to see police out and about at all times of the day.
“More importantly, we want motorists to self-regulate their own behaviour and refrain from speeding during their early morning commute – just because there are less cars on the road doesn’t mean you should drive above the speed limit.”
