Police record more than 120 speeding offences in Ballarat over Christmas

More than 200 road offences were recorded in Ballarat over the Christmas period. See the data breakdown.

Police recorded more than 120 speeding offences in Ballarat over the Christmas period.

Operation Roadwise, which went for 12 days and concluded at the end of December 27, focused on speed, drunk driving and distraction on Victorian roads.

Across the state, the operation noted 4803 speeding infringements and 13,578 offences in total.

More than 200 of those offences took place in Ballarat and 124 were related to speeding.

Six people were caught drink driving while five were caught with drugs in their system.

There were 10 disqualified drivers and 14 unlicensed drivers, while 14 people were done for disobeying signs or signals and four people weren’t wearing seatbelts.

Just two people were caught using their mobile phones and no cyclicts were caught doing the dodgy.

26 vehicles were unregistered and four were impounded in the Ballarat region.

Overall, daily offence detections were up 13.9 per cent compared with last year’s Roadwise operation, which ran for 10 days.

Seven deaths were recorded across the operation period statewide compared with nine over the same time last year.

Road Policing Acting Assistant Commissioner Justin Goldsmith called the number of speeding offences “simply unacceptable”.

“The fact such a large proportion of these drivers were at least 10km/h over the limit shows this isn’t just an inadvertent mistake,” he said.

“It’s a deliberate, conscious decision and one that dramatically increases the likelihood of road trauma.

“Of some encouragement is the correction we’ve started to see in alcohol detections off the back of some really troubling impairment figures during the pandemic.”

Acting Assistant Commissioner Goldsmith said police would continue patrolling roads heading into the New Year.