A major policing operation has targeted dangerous and reckless drivers travelling on major highways between Victoria and South Australia.
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00:00 Good afternoon, Superintendent Sharon McCrory, the Superintendent for the Horsham area.
00:05 Coming to you today from Mill.
00:07 We're in the area today, police saturating the highways into and out of the South Australian border
00:14 in both the Horsham and Warrnambool areas for a traffic operation called Operation United.
00:20 So Operation United will saturate the main highways crossing between Victoria and South Australia.
00:28 It's a combined effort between the two divisions in Western Region.
00:35 Our road toll is currently sitting at 269 people, which is significantly higher than that for 2012.
00:43 Our purpose today really is to focus on road behaviour and to try and focus on those distraction and speeding offences
00:53 and also look at heavy vehicle and driver behaviour.
00:57 We'll be taking a very low tolerant approach to even the most minor of traffic infractions,
01:03 really focusing on changing driver behaviour.
01:07 What we're looking at is to really target the drivers on our rural roads
01:11 and try and get them to think about their driver behaviour and the impact they can have on road safety.
01:19 Drivers that are driving along the Western Highway will see a high visible presence
01:24 between the border and Horsham and beyond, and tomorrow there will be a similar operation down in the Warrnambool area.
01:32 So my message to the community today is to be very mindful when you're behind the wheel on our rural roads.
01:39 As I said, our deaths on Victoria roads this year, over 50% of those occurred regionally,
01:47 and that's our focus today is to try and change driver behaviour.
01:52 There's also a message to the criminal element out there that we'll be focusing on the criminal activity
01:59 of that cross-border aspect of crime continuing across the border and into Victoria and vice versa.
02:08 Beware that you never know where we'll pop up today, and we'll certainly be highly visible and highly active across the next two days.