Tasmania Police has urged motorists to drive with care and attention to arrive at their destination safely this Christmas.

Police have ramped up their road safety focus on high risk driving behaviour and will be targeting the well known contributors to serious and fatal injury crashes.

Police operations will focus on speeding, drink/drug driving, vehicle defects, seat belt offences and inattentive driving.

Traffic operations including Random Breath Testing, road safety cameras and increased high visibility police patrols will take place across roads and highways throughout the state.

“This Christmas it would be quite an achievement to be able to celebrate a significantly reduced number of fatalities on the road,” said the Commissioner of Police Darren Hine.

“Every death on the road is a preventable tragedy. For each of the 31 people who have been killed in crashes this year there is a family grieving, particularly at Christmas.

“The road tragedies of 2009 have had a profound affect on the community. Encouragingly there has been a change in driving behaviour.

“There has been a noticeable reduction in the number of people caught speeding, with infringements down 9 per cent so far this year. There has also been a decrease in drink/drug driving infringements, down 11 per cent at the same time in 2009. Seat belt infringements are down 15 percent, and mobile phone infringements are down 39 per cent,” said Mr Hine.

“Tasmania Police has responded to the unacceptably high number of fatalities in 2009, when 64 people died on our roads and there were 247 serious injury crashes,” said the Minister for Police and Emergency Management, Lin Thorp.

“And while fewer people have died on our roads so far this year, we cannot afford to be complacent.

“That is why this Christmas, there will be an additional four high visibility police vehicles on patrol, bringing the total number to 14.

“Police have also used new mobile data technology, ANPR cameras, and lower tolerance on road safety cameras to make our roads safer.

“The community can be reassured that Tasmania Police is committed to road safety.”
 

Tasmania Police Media
(03) 6230 2296