THE North East’s top traffic cop has implored the community to seek tougher penalties after he called the long weekend a “failure”.
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A woman, 19, was killed on the roads at Rutherglen, two men, one a learner driver, were caught driving at 170km/h and a NSW man blew three times the limit at Wahgunyah.
“We consider the weekend to be a failure,” Sen-Sgt Bill Gore said.
“These sorts of things are still occurring on this type of weekend and are of extreme concern to us from a road safety and community safety perspective ... the community has got to start stepping up and say ‘This is not OK’.”
He said people could start writing to the state government to ask for tougher penalties.
“Make this stuff socially unacceptable. Ensure that the penalties fit the circumstances of the issue, take away some of the discretionary powers of the lawmakers,” Sen-Sgt Gore said.
A man driving from Melbourne to his home in Sydney was one of two people caught driving at 60km/h over the speed limit on the Hume Freeway.
Sen-Constable Rachelle Maher said the driver, 27, was detected travelling at 170km/h northbound on the freeway at 1.30pm at Benalla yesterday.
His car was impounded for 30 days, forcing him to continue his trip home on the train, and he will be summoned to court charged with driving at a speed dangerous and exceeding the speed limit.
It came after a learner driver, 25, was detected driving at 170km/h at Wodonga on Sunday at 4am and after police pulled him over, he refused a breath test, officers said.
No one was arrested for drunken behaviour at Rutherglen’s Winery Walkabout but police caught a man driving with more than three times the legal blood alcohol limit nearby.
Wodonga highway patrol Sgt Cameron Roberts said the Rennie man, 49, was pulled over for speeding on the Up River Road at Wahgunyah at 12.35pm on Sunday before he was breath-tested, revealing a reading of .154.
Sgt Roberts said you have to be a “complete and utter idiot” to break the law on a long weekend where the roads are crawling with police.
