Roadside breath test numbers drop during devastating year on Territory roads
RBT numbers have plummeted while the Territory’s road toll is the highest it’s been in 14 years. We reveal how likely you are to be breathalysed this holiday season.
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The days of rarely running into a breatho on NT roads may just be behind us.
NT Police only achieved about one-third of its target for driver breath tests in the 2021-22 year, however drivers have been warned of increased road policing this holiday season.
Despite the plummet in RBT numbers, the “reintroduction of large scale random breath testing” after Covid has been deemed one of the force’s key road safety achievements of the year.
Superintendent of Road Policing in Palmerston Peter Malley said the drop was due to border patrols and other road duties required during the height of Covid.
“The fatal five come up all the time, around fatigue, distraction, speed, seatbelt and drink and drug driving,” he said.
“Now that we’ve come out of that Covid space we’re doing lots of work around trying to achieve that 159,000.
“That’s a lot of breath tests and that will take a lot of work by everybody in the Northern Territory police.
“We’ve really moved into the large-scale RBTs and thus far, since we kicked off the holiday operation (on December 18) we’ve done almost 5000 RBTs and we’ve had 25 arrests for drink driving.
“Over the holiday period your chances of being breath tested are high and if you return a positive test you’ll be arrested.”
Superintendent Malley denied staffing was another reason behind the drop in breath tests.
However NT Police Association president Paul McCue said a “distinct” lack of policing resources could also be behind the drop.
“I am unsure why the statistics are significantly lower than predicted, but I suspect a distinct lack of resources is partially to blame,” he said.
“If resources is the issue, the only way to improve the statistic is to resource the frontline more, however we are struggling to fill frontline general duties.
“The significant challenge just to fill frontline rosters for response work would no doubt impact the ability of members to perform traffic duties given they are so busy simply responding to requests from the public.”
In a union survey 92 per cent of responding members said there were not enough police to do what was being asked of them.
The Territory’s road toll currently sits at 51, compared to 35 at the same time last year.
“It takes six months to get the toxicology stats back … but anecdotally I can tell you, last time I looked about 35 per cent of the fatalities (this year) involved alcohol,” Superintendent Malley said.
“There’s a lot of families that have lost loved ones this year.
“Those numbers are unacceptable.”
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Originally published as Roadside breath test numbers drop during devastating year on Territory roads
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