There will be a significant police presence on southern NSW roads over the last three-days of the school holidays.
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And, it won’t only be traffic and highway patrol officers who will be out in force to reduce road trauma and save lives on rural roads.
The “unique” Operation Chrome operation, launched in Wollongong on Thursday, will for the first time utilise police from all police districts within the Southern region.
The first phase of the operation runs Friday, April 27 to Sunday, April 29, and will see police target poor driver behaviours such as speeding, drink and drug-driving, not wearing seatbelts, using a mobile phone while driving and fatigue.
Assistant Commissioner Peter Barrie, Commander of the Southern Region, said reducing rural road trauma is a priority for the entire southern region.
“If you are on our roads and doing something wrong you can expect to be stopped by detectives in an unmarked car, general duties police, or one of our highway patrol officers,” Mr Barrie said.
“Our primary aim is to stop fatal crashes before they happen. To do that, we make no apologies for enforcing the road rules that are the biggest contributors to fatal crashes.
“Road safety is everyone’s responsibility. If every driver or rider takes personal responsibility for their actions, it will save lives. It’s that simple.”
With 120 additional shifts, more police than ever will be out on the road targetting dangerous drivers and talking to them about their “risky driving behaviours”.
“It seems that everybody has got a story about another driver, another road user doing the wrong thing. But far too many of us are living in houses with no mirrors and we are not looking at our own driver behaviour,” Assistant Commissioner Barrie said.
It seems that everybody has got a story about another driver, another road user doing the wrong thing. But far too many of us are living in houses with no mirrors and we are not looking at our own driver behaviour.
- Assistant Commissioner Peter Barrie, Commander of the Southern Region
Superintendent Bob Ryan, Regional Command of the Traffic & Highway Patrol, said more than two-thirds of the 118 lives lost on NSW roads this year happened in regional areas.
“And of those, over 40 per cent are involved in a single vehicle crash such as hitting a tree or some other solid object,” he said.
“The biggest tragedy is that most of the lives we have already lost were because of a poor decision by someone behind the wheel.
“Every decision matters….by way one example is a fellow who was involved in an accident just last weekend. It wasn’t a fatal accident but he had driven from Queensland to far southern NSW non-stop from mid-day one day to 3am the next day before he crashed.
“It was a poor decision, he didn’t think about the possible consequences and as a result could have killed himself and his family.”
Operation Chrome will involve all police vehicles, including marked and unmarked motorcycles patrol roads from the south of Sydney through to the Victorian border.
They will also be out along the Murray region through to the Riverina, the Hume and Southern Highlands and from Wollongong down to the Far South Coast.