New-age booze buses catching backstreet drivers
ALMOST every street in Victoria could be a booze bus site as a fleet of smaller vehicles is unleashed to catch drink and drug drivers potentially trying to use residential streets to avoid detection.
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EXCLUSIVE: Almost every street in Victoria could be a booze bus site as a fleet of smaller vehicles is unleashed to catch drink and drug drivers.
Victoria Police is conducting a statewide audit to decide locations where six new-age buses will be most effectively deployed.
They are designed to catch drink and drug drivers using residential roads and backstreets, especially to avoid police.
A drug driver was caught in the first hour of the vehicle’s inaugural deployment in Mill Park on Friday night.
Insp Danielle Leemon, from the Victoria Police road policing command, told the Sunday Herald Sun: “It gives us the ability to physically get into areas that we haven’t been able to before.”
“We will be able to get into smaller areas and smaller streets,’’ Insp Leemon said.
“It certainly gives us the capability to expand our sphere of detection.
“It’s very exciting.”
The new buses are about 2m shorter than traditional units but their smaller turning circle and manoeuvrability is the game-changer.
Force command believes deploying them to areas where bigger booze buses have been unable to go will keep drivers guessing as to where and when police could pounce.
Congested inner city areas will be a focus but the smaller buses will also be set up in regional side streets and moved around during operations.
“Historically with the older fleet because of its size we have a lot of sites across the state but sometimes they are repeated,’’ Insp Leemon said.
“With this small bus we’ll be at locations we’ve never been at before and we’ll be able to change that around across the state.
“That will certainly provide an expectation from a community perspective that we could be anywhere at any time.
“People will come off the main thoroughfare to try and cut through to get back home and there will be an alcohol and drug testing site set up.
“Any police vehicle can perform that function but certainly from a large random breath and drug testing site that the booze bus does we have a bigger capability, a bigger net, to catch more impaired drivers.
“The van will pull over one car and be dealing with one car at a time. We will be pulling in multiple cars.”
The buses are among 10 new vehicles purchased in a $15 million road safety boost.
A third of the 166 drivers and riders killed on Victoria’s roads last year had drugs, alcohol or both in their system.
“This new, smaller fleet gives Victoria Police a new tool in its fight against alcohol and drug impaired drivers — helping keep more Victorians safe on our roads,’’ Police Minister Lisa Neville said.