Acting Senior Sergeant Pat McGavigan from the Dandenong Highway Patrol said they will be targeting speeding on the roads in the following months. 60600 Picture:
By Emma Sun
GREATER Dandenong police will target speeding in a blitz to reduce road trauma.
Acting Senior Sergeant Pat McGavigan said while the Greater Dandenong, Casey and Cardinia region had seen a reducing road toll, the figures are still too high.
The crackdown comes following four deaths on local roads last year, including one on the Princes Highway in Dandenong on 15 March, one on Police Road in Springvale on 24 March, one on Clyde Street in Noble Park on 8 October and one on Virginia Street in Springvale on 3 December, where a young child was killed.
According to the TAC, Greater Dandenong is currently in the top six high trauma Police Service Areas.
As a division, Greater Dandenong, Casey and Cardinia had five less fatalities than last year, finishing at 17.
Sen Sgt McGavigan, Greater Dandenong Highway Patrol’s top cop, warned drivers that police did not want to hear any more excuses.
“Any speeding is wrong – speed limits are set to be obeyed,” he said.
“Speeding increases the risk of crashes or being involved in collisions.
“For example, in a 60 zone, for every five kilometres over the speed limit, your risk of being involved in a collision doubles.
“If people obey the speed limits, we can bring collisions down greater so we will be actively targeting on the roads at all times, day and night, and honing in on speed.”
Sen Sgt McGavigan said police are sick and tired of hearing the same old excuses when speeding drivers are caught out, and advise motorists to obey the road rules so that doesn’t happen.
“If you don’t want to get caught doing something wrong, obey the rules – we don’t touch people that are doing the speed limit, we get people who are not,” he said.
“If you don’t want to donate to the government, don’t speed.
“We’ve heard all the excuses about not concentrating and unfortunately, not concentrating leads to road trauma and we don’t want it to get to that so we’ll do all we can to prevent it.”
He urged the community to get behind the police and support them by obeying the road rules. “We’ll be a lot happier because we won’t be attending road trauma where people are getting hurt.”
