Police lament long weekend speeding

SWAN Hill police are exacerbated by the high number of speeding drivers in the Swan Hill region during the Labor Day long weekend.

Swan Hill highway patrol officer-in-charge Sergeant Zac Bull said more than 100 fines were handed out by officers for speeding in the Swan Hill, Gannawarra and Buloke local government areas.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous, to be honest … it was a real issue,” Sgt Bull said.

“There were about four loss of licenses, which doesn’t make us very happy.”

Sgt Bull said a lot of the speeding offences were blamed on loss of concentration.

“People are just trying to get to where they’re going, or they’re talking because it’s a long weekend,” he said.

“We had the food and wine festival on so lots of people that were partygoers all dolled up and trying to get somewhere, just to save a bit of time as well.”

Operation Arid saw police targeting high-risk driving behaviour across the state over four days, in an effort to drive down road trauma.

Police detected close to 5000 traffic offences during the road safety blitz.

Speeding offences made up almost half of all detections, with 75 per cent of drivers caught speeding between 10km/h and 25km/h over the speed limit.

In the Swan Hill police service area, which incorporates the aforementioned LGAs, police nabbed two drink drivers and four drug drivers, four disqualified drivers and two unlicensed drivers.

There were also six unregistered vehicles detected, and one car impounded.

Sgt Bull said the rising road toll was a concern across the state, but local police had “made inroads” locally, with two fatalities in the PSA in 2025 to date.

“We’re certainly making inroads into reducing that and we’d like it to continue,” he said.

“We were only sitting at two fatalities for the year so far, as compared with five the year before.

“We want that trend to continue but it makes it very hard when we do have those excessive speeds.”

Sgt Bull said driving impaired was “the most dangerous thing we have on our roads”.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re obeying the speed limit, that’s the person that’s coming towards you, that you don’t know if they’re impaired by a drug or alcohol,” he said.

Sgt Bull urged drivers to be patient when travelling behind caravans and trucks.

“Schools have gone back and coming into Easter, we’re seeing a lot more caravans on the road,” he said.

“We urge people just to drive to the conditions, wait safe places to overtake and try not to overtake 10 cars at once.”

Local police performed almost 3000 preliminary breath tests during Operation Arid.

“We didn’t expect to see our stats as high as what they were,” Sgt Bull said.

“Unfortunately, the 100 tickets … we prefer to get no tickets and raise no revenue for the government, but 100 tickets just blew us out of the water.

“We are still getting warm days, so instead of drinking water, people are just having that lazy beer.

“We do see a lot of readings at the moment, even though they’re under 0.5, any kind of reading means they’re actually impaired by something.”

Sgt Bull warned police would have a heavy presence on Mallee roads during the Easter and Anzac Day period as part of Operation Compass.

“We don’t want a year like last year on the roads,” he said.

Lives lost on the state’s roads so far in 2025 is 65, three more than the same time last year.