An Australia Day road safety blitz is now underway.
Operation Amity commenced at midnight using high tech equipment to detect and remove drivers and motorcyclists who are unlicensed, suspended and disqualified.
Senior Sergeant Paul Maslunka from Ballarat Police says ANPR, or automatic number plate recognition, can handle high volumes of traffic.
“It can cycle through thousands of cars in an hour. So, we can park it up on a very busy road and it’ll cycle through and it’ll check the number plates on the vehicle and it will flag any anomalies or any offences we’re looking for.”
The target for Operation Amity comes as unauthorised drivers were involved in 31 fatal collisions last year, a 29 per cent increase on the previous year, and the potential for repeat offending for those who do survive.
Victorians should be no strangers to a Victoria Police Operation over a public holiday, with each holiday targeting reckless driving behaviour.
Maslunka says the Australia Day safety blitz will be similar to what we saw at Christmas.
“You’ll obviously see lots of police around just like our focus in and around Christmas where we ran our ten day operation there.
It was noted by the public that they saw us basically everywhere and there was a lot of positive messaging about our operation and supporting us in keeping the roads safer” he said.
Operation Amity concludes at 23:59pm on Sunday 29 January.
