Alarming spike in drink-driving offences

Shocking new figures reveal drink-driver detection rates have almost doubled in two years. Data shows the extraordinary level of high-range offences.

Drink-driver detection rates have almost doubled on the level of two years ago, fresh figures reveal.

The alarming trend has emerged as the Herald Sun can reveal data showing the extraordinary level of high-range drink-driving and recidivism in Victoria.

Officers from Operation Roadwise, a major recent road blitz, caught drink-drivers at a rate of one in 254 tests.

The pre-Covid level of failures was one in 455.

Supt John Fitzpatrick of road policing operations and investigations division said a key element of concern was young restricted licence drivers exceeding their .00 limits.

He said one-third of 65 motorists caught drink-drivers busted on the Monash Freeway in a two-day December operation were .00 drivers.

Police officer breath-testing a driver at Random Breath Testing (RBT) station.

Supt Fitzpatrick said police commitments to Covid enforcement had meant there were more people choosing to take the risk.

“The downstream effect of that is that people are doing things they weren’t doing previously,” he said.

“People are now running the gauntlet. They’re making very poor decisions. We need to recalibrate that.”

Supt Fitzpatrick said the major collision investigation unit was also finding an over-representation of drink-driving in its work.

“What we should be doing is separating behaviour. If you want to drink or take drugs, don’t drive a car,” he said.

The level of high-range drink-driving and repeat offending is shown in new statistics from Victoria Police.

They show that 3177 people have been caught drink driving over .150 over the past three financial years of 2018-19, 2019-20, and 2020-21.

Of those, 182 motorists had a BAC higher than .250.

The number of people nabbed with a BAC between 0.200-0.249 rose to 227 in 2019-20 from 210 in 2018-19.

And drivers detected with a BAC of 0.250 and higher increased to 73 people from 63 over the same period.

An RBT operation on Victoria St on New Year's Eve. Picture: Kevin Farmer

There has been some decline in the raw totals because of a decline in driving during Covid and the disruption to booze bus operations.

Recidivist offenders continue to be a major problem, with 20 drink-drivers statewide being busted five or more times in the past 10 years.

The worst of that list was a 42-year-old Shepparton man with nine detections in a decade, followed by a Dandenong man, 46, and a 50-year-old Croydon South man who both had eight.

All of the top 20 drink drivers are men, and 13 are from areas outside Melbourne.

A 33-year-old Traralgon man had the highest reading of the list, having blown 0.367.

A 58-year-old Goughs Bay man produced the second highest reading of 0.289.

The youngest was a 26-year-old Wyuna man with five detections, and the oldest, a 71-year-old Tatura male who was also busted five times.