State’s harshest road blitz

By Kelly Yates
POLICE cleaned up Casey roads last week as they launched the state’s most severe strike against dangerous drivers, Operation Ardent.
The four-day blitz, designed to reduce road trauma and fatalities, rolled into action on Thursday.
More than 25 police vehicles such as booze buses, highway patrol cars and motorbikes saturated the streets, targeting speeding, hooning and alcohol and drug impaired drivers.
Embarrassingly, boozy breath readings recorded by police during the operation were ‘tweeted’ on Twitter by Victoria’s top traffic cop Deputy Commissioner Ken Lay.
“An 18-year-old Narre Warren South man, a P1 driver, caught with six peer passengers and no P-plates up in Hallam. 6 points and $473 in fines,” tweeted Mr Lay.
“A 24-year-old Narre Warren man fishtailed out of Webb St onto the Princes Highway. We impounded his Holden Rodeo Ute. Have fun on the bus.”
Mr Lay used the social networking website in an attempt to get through to young drivers thinking about drinking and driving.
Almost 4000 tweeters read regular updates about Operation Ardent on Twitter.
Police breath-tested 12,254 motorists and detected 20 probationary drivers with blood alcohol readings of over 0.00 – the legal limit for P-platers. Police also found 45 motorists with blood alcohol readings of over 0.05, and nabbed five drug drivers. Senior Constable Allen Inderwisch from the Casey Traffic Management Unit (TMU) said police were disappointed at the results of Operation Ardent.
Sen Const Inderwisch said one of the stand-out catches over the weekend was when police caught a P-plate driver with a three-year-old sitting on a cushion, not properly restrained.
“The driver said that because he was driving slowly he didn’t think it would be a problem,” he said. Police caught a man doing 138km/h in a 80km/h zone in Cranbourne North and clocked a man at 135km/h in an 80km/h section in Hallam.
The drivers caught at high speeds were males aged between 20 and 30. Operations will continue.