Western District police are targeting high speed zones in a bid to reduce serious and fatal crashes.

Senior Sergeant Mark Forteath of Western Road and Public Order Services said that 41% of serious and fatal crashes occur in high speed zones on rural roads and police activities were focused to reduce these incidents.

“Recently an operation was conducted on the Bass Highway between Latrobe and Elizabeth Town where a fully marked car and two unmarked cars, all equipped with mobile radars some distance apart, detected 15 speeding vehicles.  Each vehicle was in excess of 14km/h above the posted speed limit.  In this instance the most concerning aspect was that the majority of vehicles detected speeding was from the unmarked vehicles some distance behind the marked police vehicle,” Senior Sgt Forteath said.

“A similar traffic operation was recently conducted on the Ridgley and Murchison Highways and a vehicle was detected speeding at 30km/h above the speed limit in heavy rain.  Whilst police were speaking with the driver, a second vehicle was detected 21km/h over the limit by a second police vehicle only 3km from the first.
Senior Sgt Forteath said that police were concerned that after some motorists see a police vehicle they believe there’ll be no further police in the area and so they can exceed the speed limit undetected.

“It’s not just a few kilometres over the limit – these have all been at least 14 kms above the speed limit, some over 20.  I’d be quite happy if my team travelled these roads without an infringement being issued – all we want are motorists to travel to the speed limit and get to where they are going safely.  Speeding shatters lives, please observe the sign posted speed limits.”